Ironic Love
by HubertGudmann
Summary: James and the Marauders go back to Hogwarts for their final year. James and Lily will go through alot, but will they come through their problems together? Well of course, but we all want to know how! LJ. A/U. Please R & R
1. Questions

-Redone, you would have noticed a few spelling mistakes and other grammatical errors. It has been a long time coming but here it is!-

**Hey I'm writing a Lily/James fic and here's the first chapter.**

**A couple of things to note while you read. I am an Australian so some of the spelling or grammar may sound wrong (e.g. colour instead of color or realise instead of realize)**

**Hope you enjoy it, please review**

**CHAPTER 1 - QUESTIONS**

-James-

A cold breeze drifted in through the open window of James Potter's bedroom. I was Christmas Eve and the feel of the air on his skin raised gooseflesh and left him shivering. He didn't mind the cold though, it left him feeling exhilarated, alive, and it took the edge off the pain he felt while staring at the letter in his hands.

He had received it from Lily before break. The parchment was crumpled, the ink faded; signs that it had seen much use in the week since he had received it. He opened it once more and began to read, hoping that somehow he had just misunderstood. But as he glanced over it, he knew that was not the case. Lily had made sure that it was very clear.

_Potter,_

_I know that you fancy yourself in love with me but the way you have behaved up to this point has left me with no choice but to close that door forever. I could never be with someone who clearly has so little regard for others, who cares so little about their future, or who treats women, myself included, as trophies; little more than objects._

_Please do not try again this term to woo me. We have one and a half years left and I need to be able to focus on study so that I can have a career, not all of us have rich parents._

_If you can find it in yourself to become a better person and apologize, I could consider being a friend to you, but we will never, and I mean _never _have a relationship._

_Lily_

Why does she hate me? His thought's drifted morosely. How could anyone hate _me_, and after six years of knowing each other? I don't understand, I put so much effort into being what people expect of me. I'm fun, charismatic, a bit of a trouble maker. Is that not what people look up to? I've worked so hard at perfecting this persona to impress people but the one person that I'd really like to impress thinks that I'm an idiot. What have I done that has been so wrong anyway? Fair enough, sometimes a prank goes too far or I say something wrong in the spur of the moment but I've never meant to hurt anyone, except maybe Snivellus. I wish that she would just get to know me a little so she can see that there's more to me than just the guy who's always pulling pranks, I mean, I like other things, like flying, reading, aerobatics. This list goes on, only no one knows that. I've tried so hard to be what people want me to be that I've dropped some of the things that I love, but everyone seems to like me the way I am.

He sighed deeply. The irony that he had worked so hard to be what people expected when the person he could have been may have been better left a bitter taste in his mouth.

It was painfully obvious that Lily's dislike of him was entirely his own fault. Between the person he had created for himself and the fact that she put him at a loss for words, let alone actions, he always managed to act like an idiot when he was around her. The nights that he spent closeted in his bedroom with a book or hours of aerial acrobatics he spent perfecting with Sirius were irrelevant if she never saw them.

He tried to drown out the voice in his head but wondered at the same time whether it may be right. Could he actually change the way that he was because of, or for, a girl? If she didn't like him for what he was when everyone else did, then what did that say about her? Oh, right, that she was different, mysterious, desirable... _Worth it_? He couldn't help but think about what life might be like if he 'grew up' and 'deflated his head' like Lily was always telling him to. Maybe he should stop the flirting and tone down the pranking, maybe he should...

'James,' Sirius called as he ran into James' room and jumped on the bed, 'it's Christmas Eve and dinner's about to start, stop moping over Lily and come downstairs.' Sirius was out of the room again before James could even reply.

'I wasn't moping about Lily.' He mumbled, trying to convince himself that he needed to change into the person he wanted to be -obstacles and humiliations be damned- while at the same time debating whether or not it was worth the risk. This train of thought carried him all the way downstairs to the dinner table. An endless battle of Pros and Cons to do with changing himself. His thoughts were finally interrupted still not even half formed as he sat down.

'Finally,' Sirius said, 'I was scared that I'd have to eat yours for you'

'Right, like you won't try that anyway' James scoffed.

'Well, um, now that you mention it, oh look James it's your parents'

James' parents walked into the room and sat down with James' father at the head and his mother next to him. Meanwhile their house elf Tibbles walked in with a feast following him through the air. A snap of his fingers sent the food toward the table and a second _snap_ caused the food to settle before the family. As it lowered Sirius was nearly jumping out of his seat trying to reach the turkey, exquisite as ever. One last snap of Tibbles' fingers sounded like a whip crack and Sirius drew back his hand which had turned bright red as though he had been thoroughly rapped on the knuckles.

The meal progressed slowly for James. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the meal or the company, just that his thoughts were not at the table, but far away with Lily. His parents had noticed his out of character silence and looked at him in concern.

'James?' asked his mother, he looked up at her, realising that she must have asked him a question, 'I asked if there was something troubling you?

'Oh he's just moping about Lily,' Sirius supplied through a mouthful of food.

'What has she done now?' asked James' father.

'I, I don't want to talk about it just now,' he said sadly.

Sirius looked at him in a concerned manner and he knew immediately that there would be an interrogation that night. Sirius was the best friend anyone could ask for and was always able to see when James needed to talk, especially when he didn't want to.

James did his best to push his worries aside and tried to engage himself in the conversation. They were discussing who might seem a likely candidate for the Head positions the next year when Sirius changed the subject.

'Well I think it's pretty obvious that Lily will be Head Girl,' James said, 'she's the only justifiable choice really. Dumbledore may be a little barmy but he won't pass her over.'

'What about Head B-'

'How can I make pigs fly?' Sirius blurted out.

'What?' The other three asked simultaneously.

'Well you see, I asked out this girl before break and she laughed and said she'd go out with me when pigs started flying. I know it's just a figure of speech and all but I figured if I could show her a flying pig then she would have to go out with me!' Sirius said triumphantly and without a hint of embarrassment.

James and his parents sat silently for a full five seconds before they burst out laughing.

'You realise that she probably meant that she'd never go out with you right?' James asked, trying to contain his laughter.

'Yeah but...' Sirius said looking a little hurt.

'I'm sorry Sirius but that is rather funny,' James' father said but continued when he noticed Sirius' stony expression, 'but if you're serious about it then I'm sure we have something in the library that could help.'

At the mention of the library Sirius' face lit up 'Oh yeah, I didn't think of that.'

'Or at all,' James muttered under his breath.

'What was that?' Sirius demanded, 'What was that?'

-Sirius-

After dinner Sirius dragged James up to the library to help him look for a book. The search continued aimlessly for a while with books at random being plucked from the shelves and being skimmed over. Finally James had an idea.

'Hey Sirius' James said excitedly.

'Yeah?'

'When we transform we gain new abilities right?'

'What do you mean?' Sirius asked, intrigued.

'Like you run faster or for longer, you get a better sense of smell, I can sense danger, stuff like that?'

'Yeah...' Sirius said, not understanding why James was stating the obvious.

'Well if we partially transfigured a pig so that it had wings would it maybe be able to fly?' James asked.

'That's brilliant,' Sirius exclaimed.

They both jumped to their feet and started looking through the transfiguration section. They each staggered up the stairs to their joined rooms with both arms full of books, precariously balanced and stacked so high that they could not see over the top of them. Upon arriving they put them down and began flipping through the ones that seemed most likely.

'Here,' Sirius said after a surprisingly short ten minutes.

'_Chapter 10_ - _Transfiguration and Flight_

_A creature or person may be transfigured in various ways that let them take on attributes of that which they are transfigured into. This means that if an object is transfigured into something that can fly, that object can gain the ability of flight. When using Flight Transfiguration you must transfigure something that has a mind if you are only performing a partial transfiguration (i.e. giving a person wings) if you attempt a partial flight transfiguration on an inanimate object it will not gain the ability to fly (i.e. a goblet). The incantation to give something wings and flight is 'Tribuo Fuga'. The correct wand motion is also important, you must hold your wand out straight and lift it sharply upwards while incanting the spell.'_

'There,' Sirius said triumphantly, 'if we can do this spell properly on a pig then she'll have to go out with me!'

'Okay Sirius, if you think so,' said James, who was shaking his head, 'by the way, who is this girl, I've never known you to care so much about getting a girl to sleep with you.'

'James don't be stupid, you know I haven't slept with anyone yet,' Sirius said quietly, abruptly putting a stop to James' snickering.

'I know, but still, she must be pretty special if you're going to this much effort,' James said, sounding a bit more serious.

'She is, it's Monica,'

'As in Lily's best friend?'

'The one and only, I guess that I'm facing the same sort of problem as you. She only sees the pranks and Marauding, so she thinks I'm just an arrogant ponce like the rest of my family.'

'Hey, none of that,' James replied, 'We are your family, not that other lot. Moony, Wormtail, myself, my parents-'

'Who said I wasn't talking about you?' Sirius retorted, poking out his tongue.

He and James both laughed.

'But I'm being serious now,' Sirius chuckled with James at his terrible pun, it really never got old, 'I know that I can be the right person for her if I try, and showing her the pig will hopefully let her know that I am willing to try.

'I see what you're saying,' James said to him, 'I feel like that with Lily. I mean, I bet she doesn't know that I like to read, she said before break something to that effect, actually.

'_Maybe if you pick up a book once in a while you could fill that fat head with knowledge,' _Sirius mimicked.

'That was it,' James seemed to wince at the memory.

'Well maybe you should let her see that side of you,' Sirius ventured, 'she may even find that she likes it...'

He saw James grimace at his statement before pulling a crumpled piece of parchment from his pocket and passing it over. He read it quickly.

_Potter,_

_I know that you fancy yourself in love with me but the way you have behaved up to this point has left me with no choice but to close that door forever. I could never be with someone who clearly has so little regard for others, who cares so little about their future, or who treats women, myself included, as trophies; little more than objects._

_Please do not try again this term to woo me. We have one and a half years left and I need to be able to focus on study so that I can have a career, not all of us have rich parents._

_If you can find it in yourself to become a better person and apologize, I could consider being a friend to you, but we will never, and I mean _never _have a relationship._

_Lily_

'Ouch,' was all Sirius could think of in way of a reply.

'Yeah,' James sighed, 'so now I feel like even if I do change she'll never give me much of a chance anyway.'

He was quiet for a moment while he thought this through, 'I think you're looking at it wrong,' he said comfortingly, 'It quite clearly states that she'd be willing to be friends with you, maybe if you just avoid talk about a relationship and be her friend, she might decide that she likes you all on her own.'

James laughed bitterly, 'wishful thinking buddy, but thanks anyway.'

Sirius felt terrible that the letter had put James in such a poor mood. He and the other Marauders knew that James was a great guy underneath the 'Cocky Quidditch Captain' persona that he displayed. He obviously thought that it was what everybody wanted to see from him. It was the same thought that ran through his own head all the time. Maybe he just needed to take his mind off it for a while and give the idea time to develop.

Nodding to himself, he said, 'Right then Jamesie, let's try this transfiguration.'

James nodded glumly at him, 'Kay'

The first few attempts were unsuccessful. James had always been the best at Transfiguration but his heart was obviously not in it tonight.

After half an hour with no result other than giving a book a curly tail, Sirius felt that it was time to call it a night.

'We'd best get to sleep, we have to be up at midnight to sneak down and open presents,' he reminded James. The young man's glum face lit up a bit at this and they got ready for bed.

'Sirius?' James asked him.

'Yeah.'

'Why do you think that Lily hates me so much?'

'What?'

'Why do you think she hates me?'

'I don't think that she _hates _you James, I think that you just annoy her sometimes, like when you pick on Snivellus or talk about Quidditch or-'

'Or be me' James interrupted

'Yeah,' Sirius said 'that is you most of the time isn't it. But there's nothing wrong with being who you are!'

'But we both know that that's not who I really am, not deep down anyway. Maybe I should let all that go...'

'I dunno mate... Is it really worth it?'

'What?'

'To give up what you enjoy just because of a girl?'

'I wouldn't be giving up what I enjoy, just doing some other things that I enjoy and that aren't upsetting to her. Besides, it's not just any girl that I'm doing it for Sirius,' James said, his voice starting to get a little dreamy 'it's Lily Evans th-'

'The girl of your dreams, I know mate, and I'm sure we don't need to know about those dreams,' Sirius cringed dramatically.

'Hey sod off,' James replied

'Oh no' Sirius pleaded mockingly, 'Whatever am I going to do? Jamesie is angry at me!'

'You could shut up for a start,' James said rolling over and falling silent.

After a moment of feeling guilty, Sirius felt the need to respond, 'you should do whatever you need to do to get her mate, if she means that much to you.'

'Thanks,' James replied sleepily.

Sirius left and soon after that they had both fallen asleep.

-James-

At 12:01 James was woken by Tibbles.

'Master James,' Tibbles said, shaking his shoulder, 'it's time for you to try and get your presents.'

'Thanks Tibbles,' James muttered sleepily before going over and shoving Sirius, who snored loudly and rolled over.

'Sirius, it's Christmas,' he said in a singsong voice.

Within seconds Sirius was up and putting on clothes. 'Why didn't you say so?' Sirius asked now ready to make the run downstairs to the Christmas tree.

They crept out of their room and made their way to the top of the stairs.

'Watch out for the creaky stairs,' James warned 'they make some creaky every year.'

'Got it' Sirius said and he stepped over one he knew to be creaky and suddenly the stairs turned into a slide beneath his feet 'Wheeee' Sirius squealed as he slid down to the bottom of the stairs with James coming down behind him. They came to a stop in a heap on the floor and suddenly all of the candles were lit.

'Good morning boys,' James' parents said cheerfully.

'Damn,' James said.

'Morning Harold, Mary,' Sirius said cheerfully.

James parents laughed at them as they got up.

'Let's go in and open presents,' his father suggested.

'Yay,' Sirius exclaimed and ran into the living room where the Christmas tree was set up. Christmas was always made extra special by the Potters' tree. Enchanted by a spell that Tibbles claimed had been passed down by House Elves for generations, it glowed ethereally. It bore no decoration bar the star on top, rather, the entire tree was home to glowing fairies the danced about and sang merrily. There was no particular song or melody, but the effect was wholly more magical than many things the boys ever saw at Hogwarts. They sat around the tree and Sirius gleefully ran around and handed out everyone's presents. When everyone had received their gifts they set to unwrapping them.

Sirius and James both reached similar looking presents at the same time; both were long and thin and flared out at the bottom. They unwrapped the items simultaneously after sharing a gleeful look.

'Merlin's beard!' 'No way!' They said at the same time before looking at each other, 'Cleensweep 3's!' they both said before running to hug James' parents and running toward the front door.

'Boys,' said his mother and they stopped, 'it's 1:00 in the morning in the middle of winter, why don't you wait until morning?' She asked and they came back grinning sheepishly.

'Hehe...' Sirius said.

'Didn't think of that,' James said.

They unwrapped the rest of their presents and made their way back up to bed, barely able to wait for dawn to come.

-Lily-

Dawn broke and on the other side of London and Lily Evans awoke to the sound of her sister thundering down the stairs.

She got up and changed with practised care before going downstairs. It wasn't until she reached the bottom that she remembered it was Christmas. She ran into the living room and sat down with Petunia and her parents to start unwrapping presents. She got to the present from her parents and saw them smiling as she opened it, inside were a pair of beautiful emerald earrings, set in silver an cut into perfect hearts that seemed to be hanging on a silver climbing rose. She squealed in excitement before running to give her parents each a hug. She unwrapped the rest of her presents and to her surprise she found nothing from Potter. He had sent her something every year since they met and she was thoroughly sick of the embarrassing comments that her parents always made.

'Lily what did James get you?' her mother asked.

'_Potter _didn't get me anything,' she said, stressing the word to get her point across.

'Okay Lily, it's just that you never stop talking about him and that makes it seem as though you like him,' her mother reasoned, leaving Lily shocked at the flawed logic.

'The only time I talk about him is when I'm complaining about him Mum!'

'Alright then Lily, I'll take your word for it,' she said, obviously not meaning a word of what she said.

Lily groaned in frustration and went into the kitchen once the rest of the presents were unwrapped. She had received another charm for her friendship bracelet from Monica and she attached it as she walked. She helped her parents make a Christmas breakfast of eggs and bacon with toast, kippers, fried mushrooms and tomatoes. They chatted happily as they ate though her mother would give her a knowing smile every so often. Even with this mild annoyance, the breakfast was a huge success in Lily's mind. It wasn't often that she was able to have a civil conversation with her sister, Petunia, so every special occasion left her feeling happy.

After helping to clear the table and wash up, she walked back upstairs. It was annoying that Potter managed to get on her nerves when he wasn't even around, her mother should surely have known better than to bring him up, and on Christmas Day no less. _Oh well at least he didn't get me anything this year,_ she thought.

She heard a tapping on the window as she entered her room and saw an owl there, an owl that she instantly recognised as Potter's. She groaned as she opened the window and took the letter from it. She opened it, expecting it to be some stupid proclamation of his love but on the parchment there were only two words '_I'm sorry_'.

She and put the letter on the desk so that she could check it for spells later before going back downstairs to enjoy Christmas Day with her family.

**What do you think? Please review and let me know if I should keep it going or not.**

**_Jousche_**


	2. Confusion

**Yay chapter 2... Lots of confusion in this one. Btw I know that James is supposed to be a chaser but in this story he is going to be seeker as it will tie in with the story better.**

Chapter Two - Confusion

-Sirius-

The sun rose over the hills behind the Potter Mansion and crept into James' and Sirius' joint rooms.

"Stupid sun" James mumbled as he rolled over and went back to sleep after the unwanted wake up call.

Sirius snickered silently; James had never been one for early rising.

Under ordinary circumstances one might question what a sixteen year old boy was doing in his best friends room at the crack of dawn while said friend was asleep, but any who knew the Marauders knew that James was in for a rather unpleasant shock.

With a few choice words and a flick of his wrist, Sirius sent a jet of water flying at James.

"What the hell?" James yelled as he jumped out of bed and Sirius doubled over with laughter, "You are so dead."

James reached over to where his wand should have been, and had been until Sirius had pocketed it on his way in. Sirius smirked as James turned back to face him then laughed outright as he watched the cogs turning in his friend's head, all the while twirling the wand between his fingers.

"I win," Sirius exclaimed gleefully before proceeding to do a victory dance.

James grunted in exasperation before picking up a pillow and running to tackle and beat him into submission.

"Okay, okay. You win," Sirius said between shots with the pillow.

"That's better," said James smugly as he retrieved his wand.

"Anyway..." said Sirius "As it's daylight we are now allowed to go flying!"

James' face lit up as he ran to the bathroom, emerging one minute later fully dressed.

"How can you do that?" Sirius asked in mock disgust.

"What?"

"Only spend a minute getting ready."

"You're joking right?"

"No."

"You know, you're beginning to worry me Sirius" James said.

"Why is that?" Sirius asked.

"Well with the long hair and spending an hour in the bathroom... Are you batting for the right team?" James asked, .a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Sirius glared at James, knowing that it was just payback for being woken. Given that was the case, he decided that it deserved the same punishment so he picked up the pillow and charged at James, thoroughly pummelling him. They both stood up laughing and out of breath before grabbing their brooms and running out onto the landing.

When the reached the stairs Sirius decided that he would slide down again so he took a running jump onto the stairs. It wasn't until he was at the peak of his jump that he realised that they were not likely the still be enchanted, and it was not until he reached the bottom of the staircase, sporting several new bruises that he remembered he had been holding a broomstick that could have prevented his fall.

He grumbled and rubbed his bruised head while James laughed at his misfortune.

"Oh HA HA,' Sirius mumbled grumpily before accepting James' hand to help him back up.

The mishap was almost immediately forgotten as they continued with their original plan.

"Boys" James' mother called as they ran past the dining room.

They stopped and walked back.

"Yes Mary?" "Yes Mum?" they said in unison.

"You wouldn't want to miss Christmas Breakfast just to go flying would you?

"Um..."

"Well..."

"Boys" Mary said sternly.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world" James said quickly, which Sirius thought was rather unfair as he was just devising a perfectly good option where they could eat _and_ fly at the same time. Unfortunately this plan was doomed to failure because before he could even open his mouth to respond he found himself being dragged into the dining room by an equally unhappy looking James.

-Lily-

After clearing the table and washing up with her mother, Lily raced back upstairs and picked up the letter from James. She thoroughly examined both sides of the parchment and after finding nothing she set it back down. She couldn't see any noticeable traces of magic and wondered why he would send only that after five years of expensive gifts.

"Stupid Potter trying to mess with my head," Lily said aloud, "he honestly thinks that apologising will change anything? He can say sorry as many times as his wants but unless he changes his actions I refuse to be civil."

"Lily," Her mum called "who are you talking to?"

"No one," Lily called, fuming silently, he was getting to her again without even being there.

"This is ridiculous," Lily said, talking to herself again. She decided to send him a letter that would tell him exactly why his apology was not, and never would be accepted.

_Potter,_

_I have received your letter and would like to tell you that I refuse to accept your apology._

_I believe that even though you have said you are sorry that you are once again lying and will just start doing the same things that you always do when we get back to school. If somehow you have completely changed when we arrive back at school I will consider your apology as sincere but as I highly doubt that will happen I don't think that I will ever accept your apology._

_Lily_

She nodded in approval of her harsh refusal and called her owl Jasmine over before attaching the letter and telling her where to take it.

Feeling a lot better about herself, Lily went back downstairs to spend some more time with her family.

As she was walking down the stairs Petunia pushed past her.

"Get out of the way freak," Petunia spat.

Lily sighed, the Christmas euphoria had obviously worn off.

She continued downstairs and went into the kitchen to talk to her parents.

"Morning Lily"

"Morning Mum"

"Do you like your present?"

"Yes I love them, they're so beautiful!"

"That's good," said Lily's father, "you're becoming very hard to shop for."

Lily and her parents chatted aimlessly for a while until Lily's mother brought up the subject of James again

"So why do you hate him so much?" she asked.

"Hate who?"

"James of course."

"Well aside from the fact that he has his head stuck so far up his arse that it's just gross, he is constantly pulling pranks and flirting with every girl he can and then expects me to just fall for him like everyone else at school does. He probably has more notches on his bed post than any other guy in school and I could just never like somebody like that, as a friend or otherwise," Lily stated in a matter of fact tone.

"Well he does sound rather arrogant but surely he's not that bad, if it annoys you so much why don't you ask him to change?"

"I have mum, many, many times."

"Have you asked him to or told him to? He's much more likely to respond if you ask him as a person rather than tell him as though he's nothing," Lily's mother said philosophically.

"Well, I guess that makes sense but can we just not talk about him, please?" Lily pleaded.

"Okay but think about what I've said Lily."

"Okay," Lily murmured and for the rest of the day she wondered whether her mother could be right

-James-

James and Sirius spent all morning out on their new brooms. They raced up and down the Potters' Quidditch pitch and played one on one where the first to catch the snitch was the winner. As could be expected since it was his regular position, James won nearly every time.

They were called inside half an hour before lunch started to get showered and dressed in better clothes. James' grandparents would be at Christmas lunch as usual this year so they had to get dressed in their nicest robes.

James and Sirius came back downstairs a few minutes before the guests were due to arrive and sat down in the dining room to wait. The Potters and De Leuvres arrived through the floo shortly after and the pair rose to go and greet them.

"Mum, Dad," said James' father when his parents arrived "How are you?"

"Well thank you Harold dear" said his mother and then turned to James and Sirius. "Well don't you boys look handsome, although I still think that you should cut your hair short Sirius, it would look so much better,"

James poked his tongue out at Sirius.

"Now, now James I was getting to you," said his Grandmother.

"Ahhh!" James exclaimed as his Grandmother gave him a big sloppy kiss on the cheek.

Now it was Sirius' turn to poke his tongue out and laugh at James.

The De Leuvres arrived shortly after and more pleasantries were exchanged before they made their way into the dining room. The lunch passed with no greater excitement than Sirius turning a deep purple when he ate some of the beetroot that everyone else had carefully avoided.

After the last of the desserts had disappeared James and Sirius excused themselves and went back upstairs to start practising the 'Tribuo Fuga' spell. They managed to successfully turn a book into a small pig and proceeded turn it yellow, make it breath fire and then melt it. After all of this they were finally able to give the pig wings and watched in awe as it began to fly in circles around the room.

"Alright," Sirius exclaimed "now she'll have to go out with me"

"Don't be too confident Sirius," James laughed good naturedly, "you'll still have to prove yourself." But Sirius was not listening, rather, the opposite; he was dancing around the room chanting 'I have a girlfriend' over and over.

James saw an owl tapping at the window, he recognised it as Lily's owl and ran to open the window.

"James stop," Sirius yelled as James opened the window "Arrgh, too late" the Hogwarts Casanova finished in mid pose as the pig flew out into the afternoon

"Crap that was one of dad's books," James said as the pig became a speck in the distance.

James opened the letter and began to read,

_Potter,_

_I have received you letter and would like to tell you that I refuse to accept your apology._

_I believe that even though you have said you are sorry that you are once again lying and will just start doing the same things that you always do when we get back to school. If somehow you have completely changed when we arrive back at school I will consider your apology as sincere but as I highly doubt that will happen I don't think that I will ever accept your apology._

_Lily_

"Ouch," James said and handed the letter to Sirius.

Sirius read it then said "Well, she said in a roundabout sort of way that she'd forgive you if you changed, maybe you should take that idea on board like we spoke about."

"Yeah, I think you're right Sirius, I think I will change."

"Wait does that mean you won't pull pranks anymore?"

"Anything for Lily," James said definitely

"Not even a few?"

"No. Well, maybe just the Slytherins."

"There's the James I know. Now, don't forget that we have to attend the 'Annual Potter Christmas Ball'. We might want to start getting ready."

"Um, Sirius, it doesn't start for an hour."

"Yeah..." Sirius said, obviously waiting for James to get to the point.

"I give up, whatever, let's get ready." James said, throwing his arms up in defeat.

An hour and a half later, James was smiling and dancing with people he barely new and being talked to about careers and future by friends of his parents. He realised that he hadn't really put much thought into where he would be after Hogwarts.

Throughout the ball, even when his usual Christmas flirting targets were trying to latch on to him, all that he could think of was that he needed to change for Lily, and more importantly, for himself. He went to sleep with that thought in his head and knew that he had to change; James Potter would have to become a new man.

**Yay chapter two finished... what do you think? Please review, it means a lot to me**

**Thanks to my three reviewers for last chapter**

**Lexie-H - I've tried to fix the first chapter a bit, hope that this one is better**

**Fallen Dragonfly - Glad you like it**

**Anon - thanks**

**Until next time**

**Jousche**


	3. Changes?

**Hey here's the new chapter. Just a bit of a filler to get them back to school.**

**Just a note: I use a word in the chapter that I have invented. The word is 'slore'. Its essential meaning is the type of person who cares more about their outward appearance and social status than about anything else like intelligence etc... anyway, please enjoy and hit that little review button that you all love.**

**I disclaim all rights to the stuff that isn't mine... unless someone wants to give them to me... how about this, JKR, I will trade you an internet cookie for harry potter in its entirety, deal? ... Thought not**

Chapter Three - Changes?

-James-

Over the rest of the holidays James tried to cut back on anything that he thought might annoy Lily. He started eating in a slower and more civilised manner, started spending a little more time getting ready in the mornings to try and tame his hair and most of all he cut back on the witty remarks that had so often earned him glares.

While cutting back on these things was certainly going to help his chances, he knew that the real problem would be in getting Lily to see the other side of him. He started browsing the Library for books that he hadn't yet read and old favourites alike, hoping to find enough to see out the year. As the pile grew larger and larger he decided that it might be better just to ask his parents to send a few books for him every other week.

Another activity that occupied a lot of his time was Aerobatics. It was something that he had always loved going to see with his parents and after he had become friends with Sirius they had started practising together. The sport involved various tricky and sometimes dangerous manoeuvres on a broomstick that had to be performed perfectly in front of a panel of judges. The competitors were awarded points based on the difficulty of their attempt and the skill with which they completed it. It was a very trying sport even as a solo participant but the Synchronised Aerobatics required the most skill on a broomstick of any sport, and that was why he loved it. Aerobatics had also given him the Quidditch skills he possessed as most of the inventive tricks he used as a Seeker were things that he had done dozens of times for points in front of a crowd. There was the Wronski Feint, the Downward Spiral and myriad other moves that left the opposition confused, disoriented or on a stretcher headed back to the hospital wing.

By the end of the holidays he was extremely satisfied with himself as a person. He was still the fun loving James that he had always been but he now had a level of self control that he had never exercised before. He felt comfortable in the knowledge that he was not going to have to read in private, pretending that he was entertaining a girl. He would spend time drilling his Quidditch team in the way he had always wanted to, and if he was very lucky, he would be able to start holding civil conversations with Lily and maybe, just maybe, become her friend.

To the mock disgust and horror of Sirius, James had become a new person, or an old person who had been hiding. Without his partner in crime, Sirius was also forced to calm down a little, at least, that was the story he stuck to. James knew that Sirius was undergoing to same type of changes as himself, there was a reason, after all, that they were best friends.

During the last four days of the holidays James had forced Sirius to sit down with him and do all of their holiday work and start reading up for next term. This was the point at which Sirius seemed to be most tested.

"You know that we don't need to do the work; we've got the highest grades in the school without effort and really, what's the point of studying the 'difficult' subject of human transfiguration for McGonagall?" Sirius complained loudly.

But James persisted, "the point is that when Minnie asks whether we've done the homework we can say 'Yes, of course we have,' and the Lily _and_ Monica will be surprised, in a good way."

This was all it took to stop Sirius' grumbling and soon enough, the only sounds coming from the Library were the scratching of quills.

While their lasts few days were spent studying, the last few nights were spent planning for the 'Last Day of the Holidays Prank' that they always pulled. This year they had decided that in the late hours of the night… or early hours of the morning, they would toilet paper the Potter mansion. This may not sound very impressive but when the Potters woke up the next morning to find their house completely encased in five million two-hundred and twenty-seven thousand pieces of toilet paper even they thought it was impressive.

Amidst laughs and scolding's James and Sirius packed up their last few things, got into the car that James' parents owned and settled down for the hour long trip to the station.

On the way James' father pointed something out, "James, you're wearing your uniform on the trip this year. When have you ever done that before?" He asked in wonder.

"It has been a while hasn't it," James replied casually as though nothing was out of the ordinary.

"So is it still Lily that you're chasing after?" His mother asked.

"Who said that it's for a girl?" James asked, still casual.

"But James you changed for Lil-" Sirius started before James elbowed him in the ribs, "Ow, what was that for?" Sirius whined

"The Potter charms not working on her James?" asked his father.

"Pretty much," James sighed dejectedly.

"Don't be miserable about it James; that just means that she must be the right one. Your mother refused to even speak to me while I was trying them on her, I had to change to get her to respond and that's what you're doing. Stick to these changes and just start off being friends with her, that's where a real and long lasting relationship will come from," James' father stated philosophically.

"Really?" James asked "you always said that you just won mum over…"

"Ah, but I never said how did I?"

"Fair enough," they pulled into the station, "thanks dad," James said while getting out of the car.

"No problem James," said his father as they got their trunks out and moved towards the wall between platforms nine and ten.

-Lily-

"Urgh" Lily groaned as she woke up to her alarm clock. She hated alarms.

She looked over at the accursed thing and read the time: 7:00am.

"Urgh" she said again as she sat up.

She got up and had a shower before going back to her room to get ready for the train ride. She knew that she shouldn't care so much about it but any day in public was a day where people might laugh at you if you aren't looking nice. She dried her hair and put on her uniform and then put the robes in a carry bag to take on the train. She put on the mascara and the lip gloss that were all the makeup she wore and went downstairs for breakfast.

When she arrived in the dining room Petunia looked up and then stormed out of the room. Lily and her mother sighed at the same time as the door slammed.

"Good morning Lily," her mother said sweetly.

"Morning mum," said Lily through a yawn.

"Excited to be going back to school?"

"Not really."

"Why not? Usually you love school," her mother asked in a slightly worried tone.

"I do love school mum I'm just not overly fond of everyone who attends it," Lily said simply.

"Are you talking about James and his friends?" her mother asked knowingly.

"Maybe," Lily responded.

"Why can't you just give them a chance?"

"I have, over and over again. The only way I would even consider giving them a chance is if they suddenly became top students who acted as role models for the younger students. I mean, they aren't unintelligent, Potter, Black and Remus are actually very smart but they use those smarts to pull pranks and that isn't right," Lily said in one breath before going on, "it really annoys me that some of the best students in our grade, well maybe not Peter but the other three could go on to do whatever they want to in life if they just commit themselves, it's not really that hard to do," Lily sighed again, "I guess some people just won't change."

"You're right Lily, some won't, but some will, think about what I said, encourage change, don't demand it and it might even happen," Lily's mother said confidently.

"I guess you're probably right," Lily said.

"Now, come on, we need to leave to get to the station early, you have to help as a Prefect don't you?" her mother asked rhetorically.

"Yes mum," Lily answered while thinking again about what her mother had said. Part of her mind thought that giving the Marauders a chance might be a good idea but the larger part was telling her not to, she knew that it was right and pushed all other thoughts aside.

She got in the car and the trip was spent in comfortable silence while Lily thought about everything that had occurred since Christmas and judging by the looks being sent her way, her mother knew what was going on and let her think, deciding to pay attention to driving instead.

They arrived at the station behind a car that had (to the magical eye) obviously been expanded by magic. She took out her trunk and saw that Potter was doing the same at the car in front; she did a double take when she saw that James was already wearing his uniform and that his hair was at least trying to lay flat and he was doing nothing to mess it up. She said goodbye to her mother and moved into the station behind Potter and Black who seemed not to have noticed her yet. She silently thanked any god who would listen and took care to walk a bit behind them.

Lily stepped onto platform nine and three quarters and looked happily at the scarlet steam engine in front of her. She got on and found an empty compartment to sit in. As she sat down the door opened and her best friend Monica walked in. Monica was around five feet ten with beautiful, shiny, dark brown hair and a thin attractive frame. She had a constant happy demeanour that was contagious. Lily have her a hug before they sat down and started swapping holiday stories.

"Wow, did you see James today Lily?" Monica asked.

"Only once, why?"

"Well for one he was wearing his uniform, and secondly, he walked past Snape and didn't even say a word to him, isn't that crazy? It seems like he's changed a little over the holidays."

Lily gulped slightly, "changed how?" she asked hesitantly.

"Well he doesn't seem to be a total-" she stopped as the compartment door opened to reveal none other than James Potter and the other Marauders

"Oh sorry" James said when he saw who was in there "we'll just go sit somewhere else"

"But James this is our compartment" Peter whined

"We're going to sit somewhere else," James said in a cool voice to Peter and with that he shut the door and left.

"See Lily, he didn't ask you out or make some suggestive comment to you!"

"Yeah, that's… odd," Lily stated, rather confused.

They began to chat about their holidays again as the train started moving off toward the rest of their school year.

-James-

"We're going to sit somewhere else" James said in a cool voice to Peter.

"Okay" Peter squeaked, not realising why James didn't try to get rid of the girls.

They wandered further down the train and found an empty compartment just before the train started moving.

"Ahh" Sirius let out a sigh as he sat down heavily on the chair

"Yeah," said James, "it's good to be going back."

"James," Peter started hesitantly, "why didn't we sit in our compartment?"

"Because there were already people in it," James stated simply.

"So? There are people in it every year; we usually just kick them out."

"Ahh but this time it was Lily," Remus clarified, "isn't that right James?"

"Basically yeah" James said "I've decided that I'm going to change myself into someone that I like better, someone who's worthy of Lily."

"But James, what about the Marauders?" Peter asked.

"We can still do stuff, I just won't be able to help with all of the pranks or taunt the first years or hex the Slytherins-"

"So you're ditching the Marauders!" Peter accused.

"Of course not, I just have tone the 'marauding' down a little. It's to help me win Lily and, more importantly, to make me happy. Don't you understand Wormtail?" James asked, reverting to the Marauder nickname in a bid to raise Peter's spirits.

"Yeah I guess" Peter said, not looking as though he believed it.

"There we are Wormtail, all better see," Sirius said, trying to mend the awkward gap between James and Peter, "now, we have to make the end of year prank huge this year, last year wasn't bad but we have to make this year's one unforgettable. You still in on this Prongs?"

"Of course!"

"Well then, let's start planning."

They spent the rest of the train ride thinking up overly elaborate plans for pranks, most of which would probably never work.

As they finally pulled into the Hogsmeade Station Remus said, "We'll think of something, I'm sure."

"What was wrong with my ideas?" Sirius pouted.

"Which of the one-hundred and eighty-seven should I start with?" Remus asked as they walked toward the carriages.

"Hmm…" Sirius said as if deep in thought, "number one,"

"Okay, how can you think that letting a dragon loose in the school is funny?"

"As I said, we just need to stop it breathing fire and cut its nails," Sirius said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Remus just shrugged and got into the carriage, "nothing I say will stop him will it?"

"Hey at least you didn't have to help him find out how to make a pig fly… Oh no, Sirius where did you get that?"

"I bought it," Sirius exclaimed happily, picking up his new pig and putting it in the carriage.

"You know McGonagall will never let you keep it right?"

"Well I only need it once, when Monica sees it flying she'll be so amased that she'll go out with me at once," Sirius said happily, his tone only slightly betraying that he was joking.

"Remember Sirius," James started so that the others couldn't hear, "don't demand it of her, use the pig to show her that you're dedicated"

"Got it," Sirius said confidently.

As the carriage approach Hogwarts all four boys look up at it in awe as they had done every other year since arriving by boat at the age of eleven.

They hopped out when they reached the gates and walked up the winding path to the doors. They made their way inside and Peeves the poltergeist momentarily stopped pelting students with water bombs to salute them, they bowed to him and went into the Great Hall to wait for the start of term feast to begin, but James did not miss the glare Lily sent him when she saw him bowing to Peeves.

-Lily-

Lily and Monica walked through the front doors of Hogwarts and saw Peeves floating above them with water bombs at the ready and they ran over to the doors with their bags over their heads to keep themselves dry.

When they felt no water on themselves they stopped and looked at Peeves who was saluting the Marauders, she watched them bow to him and then glared at Potter.

"Stupid Potter," she said to Monica, "you see, he hasn't changed a bit"

"He could just have been acting politely," Monica suggested but Lily refused to believe it, she knew that Potter would never change and she hated him for it.

"Let's go in before Peeves starts up again," Lily said irritably, desperately searching for an excuse to be away from Potter.

They went in and sat down at the Gryffindor table and waited along with everybody else for the feast to begin.

Dumbledore stood up once everyone was seated and bid them welcome.

"Welcome back from what I hope was an enjoyable break," Dumbledore started, "I expect that your brains are nice and ready to be filled with lots of new knowledge and are open to new ideas and changes in your lives. But, as we all know, no one can learn on an empty stomach, so please, dig in," with that he sat down and started to eat and the hall was filled instantly with the chatter of many students.

Lily sat and ate quietly, thinking about what Dumbledore had said, she looked up and saw him looking at her, he nodded at her and winked. She turned back to her food and wondered if maybe his statement about changes had been directed at her. Though how he could possibly know what was going was beyond her.

Her thoughts continued along a similar train all night and when she went to bed she could think about nothing but whether or not Potter had changed and if somehow Dumbledore knew what was going on, not to mention the fight from at dinner. Needless to say it was a very restless night.

-James-

James sat during dinner pondering Dumbledore's words; he knew that he was trying to change and also that he had a long way to go but he didn't understand how Dumbledore could possibly know any of that.

A Gryffindor fifth year that he had dated on and off over the last term came and sat next to him and tried to hug him, he pushed her away without realising who it was as he was still deep in thought.

"Jamsie, why are you doing this?"

"Oh hey Mel," James said as he turned around and looked at her, "it's just kind of weird when someone randomly comes up and hugs you is all"

"What do you mean randomly?" she asked "We're going out."

"Ah yes," he started sarcastically, "I see the problem."

"What problem?" she asked, rather confused.

"Girls who sacrifice all of their intelligence to try and boost their appearance and popularity" James stated simply before turning back to his food.

"What do you mean James?" she asked.

"I mean that I cannot respect myself if I date someone who obviously only dates me to boost their popularity," James said in the same calm voice.

"Well don't then," Mel said trying to press herself against him, "Date a real woman. You know, someone who actually cares what people think of them, unlike that stupid know-it-all Evans girl, I mean honestly, she's so ugly with that red hair and no makeup."

"Did you listen to a word I just said?" James said with much more force and volume, "I don't want to date a stuck up slore like you. I would love, I would absolutely love to have even the tiniest chance with a girl like Lily whose beauty comes from within, unlike your fake, drawn on, beauty that doesn't count for anything!"

James got up and left the Great Hall, oblivious to all of the stares he was getting and completely unaware of the amazed look that Lily was sending in his direction.

When he got upstairs he realised that he didn't know the password. He swore and sat down. A few minutes later he heard footsteps.

"The password is 'slore'" Remus said as he walked up to James.

"Slore?" James asked.

"Well Dumbledore heard you using it and seemed to think that you had the right idea, and maybe saying it every time they enter the common room will make people think about the way they act."

"Yeah" James said distantly before walking in and heading straight up to bed all the while wondering whether Lily had noticed any of the changes that he had made.

His thoughts continued along a similar train all night and while he lay in bed he could think about nothing but whether or not Lily noticed his changes and if somehow Dumbledore knew what was going on, not to mention the fight from at dinner. Needless to say it was a very restless night.

**Yay, thanks to my awesome reviewers from last chapter, that chapter doubled my reviews and tripled my hits. You all get virtual hi-fives!**

**Litara - sorry the chapters are a little short, I could combine them but then I would update way slower.. I'll try to find a balance of good length and update speed.. This one is 500 words longer than the last.**

**Carola-x - thank you and I will update when I can, I sometimes write nonstop for a day and then not for a week, my writing brain has mood swings..**

**zaz14 is potter mad - thank you very much, I will try to keep it good the whole way through.**

**Thank you to everyone who looked at my story, please review, it makes my day.. Sad isn't it.**

**Jousche**


	4. Good Ideas and Bad Ideas

**Yay, chapter 4. **

**i tire of disclaiming everytime, JKR, if i somehow make money off of the story you have my full permission to shoot me, and that goes for all other chapters of this story.**

**This chapter is dedicated to PottersLittleSister**

**------------------**

Chapter Four - Good Ideas and Bad Ideas

The next morning Lily was up at 7:00, re-starting her routine of the past six years; get up early, shower, get dressed, put on that tiny bit of makeup to bring out her eyes and then head down to breakfast.

Every weekday she would do this and every weekday she would be among the first at breakfast, she loved that fact. She would always get her favourite foods and then have time to chat with Monica when she came down half-an-hour before class started. Routines were something that she loved.

Lily walked down to the Great Hall humming a nameless tune and when she walked inside she was shocked to see James and Sirius already at the table and eating breakfast. She sat down in her usual spot at the other end of the table from them and began to put food on her plate.

"You can't do it during breakfast" she heard James say in a loud whisper.

"Why not?" came Sirius' response

James telling Sirius not to do something was certainly a new thing and her interest was piqued. She got up and walked over to them.

"Potter, Black, what are you fighting about? Some of us are trying to eat" Lily asked as she started to go into angry Prefect mode.

"Just trying to stop Sirius from doing something stupid Lily" James responded with a smile

Lily looked at him coolly, ignoring the patented 'Potter Smile' that he sent toward her. "It's great that you're finally learning some common sense but could you please try to do it quietly?" She asked, surprised at her own civility.

"Of course Lily, but, when Monica comes in could you prepare her because Sirius wants to do something that might be a tad embarrassing for her.

"Like what?" Lily asked, her interest once again piqued.

"Well you remember before break when she said she might consider dating Sirius when pigs started flying?"

"Yeah" Lily responded

"Well it seems that he took her literally and over the break he has come up with a way to make pigs fly and he wants to show her at breakfast" James stated

"Wow, that's surprisingly sweet of him but she'd die of embarrassment if he did that in front of everyone" Lily said, slightly worried now.

"I know, that's why I'm trying to stop him" James said, exasperated

"You know I can hear everything that you're saying right?" Sirius asked

"Yeah, and?" James asked

"Whatever. Lily, do you really think that she'll be mad if I do it?" Sirius asked with a slightly worried expression on his face, one Lily had never seen on him before.

"Um, yeah" Lily said "how would you feel if one of the girls that you've dated came up and told you that you were a horrible kisser?"

"Well I'd probably call them a liar then laugh at them" Sirius said while pretending to be deep in thought.

"Okay bad example but just don't do it or she will hate you for the rest of her life"

"Okay then" Sirius sighed and got up from the table "come on Lucy back to the dormitory with you" Sirius picked up his pig and took it out of the Great Hall.

"Lucy?" Lily asked out loud

"Ha ha, yeah Sirius decided that he had to name it" James said casually

Lily realised that she was alone with James and thought hurriedly "My breakfast is probably going cold, I'd better go and eat it" She stammered before starting to walk away

"The food can't go cold at Hogwarts Lily, we all know that" James called after her.

She mentally berated herself for the stupid excuse as she sat down and ate her wonderfully warm breakfast.

Monica came in a few minutes later and sat down next to Lily.

"Morning Lily" she said as she began putting food on her plate

"Morning Monica" Lily replied

"Hey what's James already doing down here? Since when do any of the Marauders eat other than five minutes before class? He really is changing, this is weird"

Lily winced. Like she needed reminding of the fact that James might actually be changing and more so that he might be changing for her. She had to stop that train of thought.

"Hey Mon you'd better hurry and eat, class starts soon" She blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"Yeah, in like, twenty minutes. Something wrong Lily?"

"No, I'm fine" She lied "just thinking too much"

"About what?"

"Nothing" Lily lied again before changing topics and avoiding any talk of James' changes.

-------------------

After Lily left James finished his food quickly. After all the changes he'd made she still hated him. Well at least she spoke to him without yelling for a bit. He put the last of his food in his mouth and then stood up to leave the Great Hall. Once he was outside it he yawned loudly, getting up early certainly didn't agree with him but if it would help Lily accept him then he would do it. He walked toward the stairs and noticed Sirius off to the side talking to himself, Lucy squealing happily from on the floor next to him. James walked over.

"Hey Monica would you walk to Potions with me? Nah, that sounds stupid- Oh hey James" Sirius covered up as he saw James.

"Hey, are you alright? James asked

"Well I want to show Monica what Lucy can do and I'm getting this weird feeling in my stomach. I've never felt like this before" Sirius tried to explain but his voice was confused.

"You actually like her Sirius, that's what it is. I'll ask Lily to help; she was nearly nice this morning"

"Thanks James"

"No problem" James said before walking back to the Great Hall.

He walked in and went over to where Lily was sitting with Monica.

"Hey Lily, could I talk to you for a moment?" James asked cautiously.

"Why?" Lily asked

"I just need to talk to you about something" his eyes darted to Monica "it's really important, please"

"Fine" Lily stood up and followed James out of the Great Hall

"Look at him" James pointed over to Sirius who was pacing up and down nervously

"Wow, he looks confused, that makes no sense, he isn't in class yet and he never does homework" Lily said sarcastically

"You can be really cruel you know that?"

"What do you want James?"

"I want you to help Sirius. When you and Monica come out to go to class can you walk with me so that Monica will have to walk with Sirius? He wants to show her what he's done and how much effort he's put into this. You can't tell him I told you this but he even has butterflies for Merlin's sake, Sirius is never nervous around girls. Could you please just help so that Monica will give him a chance?" James pleaded

"I guess I could" Lily said reluctantly

"Thanks Lily" James said happily "you have no idea how much this will mean to him"

"I'm only doing this because he's put so much effort into this, he deserves it" Lily said with a tone of finality in her voice

"That doesn't matter, thank you so much for doing it for him, and thank you for giving me a chance to speak" James caught Lily's shocked expression after he said this and knew that changing was going well for him. "Anyway, we'd better head back in"

"Yeah" Lily said and they walked in and sat back down.

Monica looked at James curiously as he sat down next to them but said nothing about it.

Once Monica had finished eating they got up to go to Potions.

"Hey James, would you mind if we finish that conversation now?" Lily said when they got out to the Entrance Hall.

"Sure" he said and motioned Sirius over

"Hey Monica" Sirius said as he walked up

"Hi" Monica said curiously

"Would you like to walk with me to Potions seeing as James and Lily are walking together?" Sirius asked hopefully.

"Okay" Monica said hesitantly

Sirius visibly grew happier and set off slowly.

As everyone else entered the classroom Sirius stopped suddenly

"What's wrong?" Monica asked

"Could I show you something?" Sirius asked

"As long as it's not indecent" Monica ventured to joke

Sirius laughed "No, it's nothing like that" he said "Lucy, come here"

"Lucy?"

"She's my pet pig" he explained as she trotted up

"You have a pet pig?"

"Well, I'm not sure if you remember but at the end of last term you said you'd think about dating me when pigs started flying so I got a pig and I've taught her to fly, look" Sirius waved his wand "Tribuo Fuga"

Lucy grew wings and took off gracefully within the limited space of the corridor.

"You did all this just to get me to go out with you?" Monica asked in disbelief

"Will you?" Sirius asked

"Sirius, you have to understand that as thoughtful as this is, it doesn't mean that I'm going to go out with you. I can't just go out with you, I mean, we barely know each other" she saw Sirius' shattered expression "but I will give you a chance to get to know me" she said

"Thank you." Sirius said, releasing a breath that he didn't realise he'd been holding "Thank you"

-------------------

"How do you think it's going?" James asked Lily

"Not very well" Lily said simply "She doesn't like him at all, she might give him a chance now but she won't be going out with him just because he made a pig fly"

"So you're saying that he needs to change?" James asked

"Basically" Lily said "if you want someone to like you but they hate you then you have to change some things"

"Fair enough" James said, secretly happy that Lily had, in a roundabout way, admitted that she still might change her mind about him

Sirius and Monica walked into the classroom just before Slughorn and sat down next to Lily and James.

"Why were you guys so late?" James asked

"Sirius was just showing me something" Monica said

"Nothing inappropriate I hope" Lily said

"Why does everyone think that about me?" Sirius asked a little too loudly and stopped talking when everyone started staring at him.

The rest of their classes passed without event and after dinner James and Sirius went upstairs to their dormitory and saw Remus and Peter playing chess.

"Where have you guys been all day?" Sirius asked

"Yeah I didn't see you after potions" James continued

"Peter spilt some of that potion on himself while we were packing up so I took him to the hospital wing, Madame Penner told him not to go to any more classes and after potions and after Charms I have different classes to you two" Remus explained

"Ah okay" Sirius said while winking at James "so you weren't making out in a broom cupboard then?"

Remus gagged and Peter, who was still not well from the potion, actually threw up on Remus.

James and Sirius both started laughing hysterically and when they were finally able to stop Sirius had an idea.

"I have an idea!" Sirius exclaimed

"Is it lonely?" James and Remus asked at the same time before breaking into laughter

"Shut up. Anyway, Peter, do you have any of that potion left?" Sirius asked

"Only what Slughorn's marking" Peter said "Why?"

"Well if it's made you prone to throwing up then what do you think it will do if released into the Slytherin shower system?" Sirius asked gleefully

"We need that potion" Peter said

"I'm not going" James said

"What?" The other three all asked

"I promised myself that I wasn't pulling pranks anymore except for the end of year pranks and start of year pranks"

"But, but-" Sirius was lost for words

"I'm not doing it" James said with finality

"Fine, let's go" said Sirius "have fun not pulling the greatest prank of the term"

"It's the only prank this term Sirius, it's only first day back" James said

"Bye" Sirius said

James sighed as they left, he knew that what he was doing was right but he was still put out by missing out on the fun.

-------------------

The next morning at breakfast James sat with the other Marauders as they waited for the Slytherins to come in. Sirius couldn't sit still and spent the half hour before the Slytherins arrived fidgeting and looking over at the door.

"Hurry up" he kept muttering under his breath

"Complaining won't make them get here any faster Sirius" Remus said for the tenth time

While all this was going on James realised something. The fact that he didn't actually do anything didn't mean that Lily wouldn't think he had done something.

"Crap" he said as he ran down to where Lily and Monica were sitting. He was ten metres away when the Slytherins walked in and Sirius let out a modified battle cry while projecting an image of Snape in the shower onto one of the walls. Immediately the entire Slytherin population –minus Snape- threw up the contents of their stomachs.

James looked over to where Lily still sat and saw her fuming. He walked the rest of the way up to her miserably and weakly tried to explain.

"Lily, please listen" he said but was cut off

"I don't want to hear it Potter" Lily said coldly

"It wasn't me" he tried to explain in vain

"Oh yes, it was the other Marauders who were conveniently letting out battle cries when the Slytherins walked in" she replied sarcastically

"Please just let me explain"

"No Potter, I thought that you might have been changing but I can see that I was wrong, you had your chance and you blew it, congratulations." Lily got up and stormed out of the Great Hall

"I thought it was funny" Monica said weakly from the side

"I didn't do anything" James repeated

"That's hard to believe James, and even if you didn't, all evidence points to the contrary"

"I didn't do anything" James said more firmly "Lily told me that I have to change and I am, when Sirius thought up that prank I told all three of them that I wanted no part in it"

"Sirius thought it up?" Monica asked "I thought that was Remus' job"

"It was Sirius, and now Lily hates me again" James said miserably

"If you want to change her mind you have to get the others to own up, and keep changing" Monica told him

He decided that he might do just that.

-------------------

**well, what did you think, review and let me know, im open to any ideas or critisisms you have.**

**thanks to my reviewers from last chapter**

**tic tac toe 03 - thanks, i will try to update quickly, as i have mentioned sometimes my writing brain goes on strike**

**if i was a ninja - yes, my evil words shall corrupt the world**

**Carola-x - yes, i loved the peeves part, nothing seems to go right for james does it?**

**PottersLittleSister - thanks you for your encouragement and ideas, they mean a lot**

**anyway, till next time**

**jousche**


	5. Slore

**hey, sorry about the really slow update, i have had heaps of school stuff ive had to do... that and im lazy...**

**anyway here is the next chaper. **

**IMPORTANT: in this chapter i am using the word 'slore' again, chapter three has a definition. anyway, you should try using it, its funny..**

**read, enjoy and please review**

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Chapter Five - Slore

Throughout the rest of the day James tried to talk to Lily but every time he said a word to her she turned away and ignored him. James decided that maybe it would be best to try what Monica had suggested, the only problem was that the Marauders had never owned up to a prank before and they weren't likely to change that tradition. Never-the-less, James went up to the dormitory after dinner preparing his arguments.

"Slore" he said as he walked up to the Fat Lady. She laughed at the word and let him in.

He went upstairs and opened the door to his dormitory and saw the other three Marauders sitting on Sirius' bed and discussing something in a low whisper.

"Hey guys," James said and the other three jumped "what are you doing?"

"Oh, it's you James" Remus said, looking relieved

"Quick James, come sit down and help," Sirius said excitedly "we thought we'd follow up today's performance with something just as good at tomorrow's breakfast"

"No Sirius, that's what I came up here to talk to you about" James said, sighing "That prank you three pulled has got Lily hating me again"

"But James," Sirius asked "you didn't actually do anything, how can you get in trouble before you've even done anything?"

"Because Lily thinks that I did do something. There's no proof that I didn't do anything and Lily refuses to believe me when I tell her that I had no part in it."

"So…?" Remus stretched out the vowel

"So I need you guys to own up to Lily so that she won't hate me anymore"

The other three Marauders looked at him in shock

"You know we can't do that James" Sirius said (believe it or not) seriously

"He's right," Remus added "we all swore that we could never tell anyone that we had pulled a prank, even if everyone knew we had done it."

"But this is different guys," James reasoned "you don't have to tell Lily that you did it, just that I didn't do it"

"Well… I suppose we might be able to, but we'd have to know that she won't bite our heads off for it" Peter said

"Well we all know I can't guarantee that" James said

"Ah well," Sirius said in a philosophical tone "no man can have everything, but the one thing any man can have is fun, so let's get back to this prank"

"Sirius you can't," James pleaded "you have to wait until Lily's giving me a chance, please Sirius"

"Well, okay James, but you owe me an extra good Christmas present" Sirius said gleefully

"Sirius, we just had Christmas" Remus pointed out

"Oh yeah," Sirius said, frowning as he thought out his reply "well then, you have all year to save up for something great, like a motorcycle, James will you get me a motorcycle, pleeeease? I've seen Muggles driving them, they look like so much fun, maybe I could make it fly too…" Sirius continued to rant for the rest of the night, James was just glad that he still had a chance with Lily.

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Two days later after he fight with Potter, Lily went downstairs to find all four Marauders waiting in the common room. She knew that nothing good would come from talking with them so she tried to walk past without looking at them, but, as luck would have it, Sirius Jumped up and cut her off.

"Good morning Lily" Sirius said happily

"What do you want" Lily growled

"We just want to talk to you" Sirius said while trying to lead Lily over to the couch

"No, leave me alone" Lily said, struggling to get away from Sirius

"Stop being so childish Lily, just come and sit down and talk for a bit"

"But I have to go to breakfast"

"It won't kill you to not be early for once"

"But…" Lily ran out of excuses

"But nothing, come sit down"

Lily sighed as Sirius took her over and sat her down. She knew that nothing good would come of this.

"Lily, we have to tell you something" Remus stated

"Oh?" Lily asked

"Yes, well" Remus started

"James wasn't a part of the prank the other day" Sirius said simply

"And why would I believe that?" Lily asked incredulously

"Because it's true. When the people who pulled the prank asked for James' help, he refused because he knew you would get upset" Sirius said

"And who suggested it to him?"

"Wouldn't have a clue" Sirius said with a wink

"Again, why should I believe you?"

"Because it's breaking Jamesies heart that he's trying so hard and you won't even give him the time of day." Sirius said

Lily looked at James and saw him go red as Sirius called him 'Jamesie' but aside from that he looked completely honest.

"Well why didn't you tell me Potter?" Lily asked, trying to figure her way out of the situation

"I tried, you ran out of the Great Hall and then avoided me all day, remember?" James asked, looking hurt

"Well, when have you ever not been a part of the pranks?" Lily asked, desperately trying to get out of her predicament

"Since the start of term"

"Well," Lily couldn't figure out any way out of it, she sighed "okay, I believe you. I'm sorry for accusing you Potter"

"That's okay Lily" James said and got up and opened the portrait hole in a gentlemanly fashion for Lily to leave through and shut it behind her.

James sighed with relief "Thanks guys"

"Any time," Sirius said "but don't forget, you owe me a motorcycle"

"You know what, that sounds nearly worth it. If Lily and I are friends by next Christmas I'll buy you a motorcycle."

"Really?" Sirius asked, shocked

"Yup"

"Awesome"

Sirius again spent all day talking about flying motorcycles and James just tried to act like he knew he had to if he ever wanted a chance with Lily.

xqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxqxq

The next week of term passed in a flurry of work and Sirius' non-stop motorcycle comments. It wasn't until Saturday morning that Hogsmeade notices went up. All around the castle people were making plans for the day that was to be held on the Sunday in two weeks time. Breakfast at the Gryffindor table was progressing as usual, the Marauders sitting near the middle of the table, James looking over at Lily every few minutes and Sirius looking over at Monica every minute in between. Lily and Monica sat at the end of the table as far away from the Marauders. Lily was getting more and more annoyed every time James looked at her; the longing in his eyes disagreed with her thoughts that he was just infatuated and would be over it soon anyway. Just when Lily was about to get up and yell at him she was beaten to the task as Melanie Fisk from Ravenclaw walked up and tapped Potter on the shoulder. Lily listened eagerly, hoping for Potter to go off at the (as he had said) 'slore' again. Lily wondered if she might see that down to earth Potter again.

"Hey Jamesie" Melanie said sweetly

"Why are you still calling me that Melanie?" James asked, obviously irritated.

"Well, I was thinking that maybe you'd like to come to Hogsmeade with me, just like we used to. We could go to Madame Pudifoot's and then see where that takes us." Melanie said suggestively

James sighed "Why on earth would I want to do that?"

"Well, every guy has needs James," she said in a quieter voice, Lily could barely catch the rest "I can satisfy all those needs" she winked at him seductively

"Melanie," James let out in a frustrated tone "do you honestly think that you are going to get anywhere in life if you keep acting like such a slore? I'm sorry but I don't want to date a girl with no future"

For the second time in two weeks, Lily watched James leave the Great Hall and could barely contain her surprise and glee at seeing Melanie given the talking to that she so sorely needed. Though she didn't understand James' change in attitude toward people like Melanie, she found it a rather nice change. She silently berated herself for letting her opinion of Potter be swayed. _He's the same Potter, the same, no-good Potter_ She silently told herself but not believing it as readily as she previously had. James Potter really could be changing.

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James was fuming as he left the Great Hall. He didn't know why he had dated Melanie in the first place, why he had dated anyone like her in the first place, he had always known that nothing good could come of it but at the time he didn't care. Every time Lily pushed him away, it was easier to crawl back to someone like Melanie than to go through it himself. She had taken full advantage of that fact and now sought to use it to get back with him. What she didn't realise was that he had changed. James Potter had changed for the better, he knew that he had done it and now everyone else was seeing it. E only hoped that Lily might see it as well and decide to give him another chance because of it. He knew that it may take him a long time bt if he had to wait another year for Lily to come around then he would. He knew that with gentle persistence he could get her to see him in a new light eventually.

James was walking up to Gryffindor tower when one of the portraits called out to him.

"Oy you mangy dog, get over here"

He turned and saw a Sir Cadagon sitting atop his horse.

"That's better" the Cadagon said "Dumbledore wants you in his office". Cadagon promptly turned his horse and galloped out of the portrait calling "I'll be back to deal with you later!"

James sighed and shook his head at the deranged painting. He turned and walked back down to Dumbledore's office. When he arrived at the Gargoyle he realised that he had no idea what the password was. He looked at the Gargoyle, umming and ahing.

"The Gargoyle looked at him and said "Hello James, don't worry about the password, by telling it to you Dumbledore has to change it every week to keep it a secret."

James laughed and walked up the ascending staircase, he was still chuckling as he reached the door and knocked.

"Come" came Dumbledore's voice from inside

James opened the door and walked in, looking around the familiar office as he did.

"Ah, James. Glad to see you could make it here so quickly." Dumbledore said "Now, I want you to know that I think your view on people is quite a good one"

James was slightly confused, Dumbledore wasn't there either time, how could he know what had happened so soon?

"But you really do need to keep your temper in check. Poor Miss Fisk is in her dormitory crying at the moment because of what you said to her, whether it was right or not. Hopefully she will take something from this but you cannot just go around saying things like that. I'm going to have to give you detention"

"But sir" James protested

"No James, you will serve detention with me at 7:00 tonight, I am going to have you give me twenty different definitions of the word 'slore', just to make sure that you know how to use it." Dumbledore winked "I've taken a liking to that word, if any of your definitions are good enough I might just have it added to the dictionary. Now, you may leave" Dumbledore continued his work and James saw that he was smiling.

"Yes sir" James said before leaving Dumbledore's office and heading up to Gryffindor tower, he wondered what detention with Dumbledore would be like.

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**did you like it? please review, also, try using the word slore, its so much fun, great word. i will spread my evil throughout the world (evil cackle)**

**till next time, thanks to all my reviewers**

**jousche**


	6. Plans Shattered

**A/N: Hey, know this is really incredibly short but I havent posted in so long that i thought a should put up what i had. at the bottom the will be importncely like stuff, please make sure to read it.**

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The next day Lily sat in class with Monica after lunch. She was silently taking notes but looked up with everyone else as the Marauders minus Potter strolled casually in a mere fifteen minutes late.

"Ah boys," Professor Flitwick exclaimed with a wink "nice to see you here so early today"

"It's good to see you too Professor." Sirius said with mock –or was that genuine?- affection.

"Sit down and get notes from someone please." Flitwick continued his dictation and everyone continued writing, everyone that is, except for Sirius.

"Why aren't you writing?" Lily whispered fiercely to Sirius

"I don't need to" he stated simply

"You don't need to? Or do you just not care that you'll fail?" Lily snapped

"Wow, someones grumpy. Is it 'cause Jamesie isn't here?" Sirius asked innocently " and no, I never study, I just listen, that's enough"

"Why would I care where Ja- Potter is?" she asked, highly affronted

"Because you like him, obviously" Sirius proclaimed loudly enough for everyone to hear

"Shut up Sirius, no I don't" Lily whispered

"Who does Lily like?" Remus asked

"Why, dear Jamesie of course" Sirius' eyes were full of mirth at Lily's obvious discomfort

"Ah, so they finally did it did they?" Remus asked but Lily mised the gleam in his eye

"NO" Lily screamed, horrified

"Miss Evans are you quite alright?" Professor Flitwick asked

"Yes sir" Lily said

Lily went back to working but after fifteen minutes she paused and looked at Sirius to see him leaning back in his chair casually and, of course, not working.

"So tell me, what are your grades like?" she asked him

"Can you keep a secret?" Sirius asked, all humour gone from his voice

"Um, yeah" Lily replied, Sirius being serious was a rare phenomenon

"O's and E's" Sirius whispered

"No way!" Lily exclaimed

"Yes way" Sirius replied "Now let me get back to listening"

"But all you ever do in class is talk"

"Yeah but I'm a man, I can multi task" He said triumphantly and turned to tell Remus something

"But everyone knows that men cant-" she stopped talking, seeing that he wasn't listening.

_Stupid Sirius _she thought _how come he can get good grades without trying_. Before she knew it the bell was ringing and Lily realised that she had spent most of the lesson talking to Sirius and then grumbling to herself. _Damn _she thought_ stupid Sirius, he made me miss most of the lesson, argh_. Lily went down to dinner still fuming about missing some of Charms, her favourite lesson.

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James woke up and stretched slowly. he looked at his alarm clock and sat straight up.

"Holy shit" He let out as he read the time "12:00"

He made to get but changed his mind.

"Hmm, I've already missed half the day, and I am tired" he reasoned to himself "yeah that'll work" he lay back down tried to sleep again, but instead of sleep coming his mind was flooded with thoughts of Lily._ Hogsmeade weekend is soon, and Valentines is the week after... I wonder if she might think about going with me? No, thats stupid, she hates me still. But I have to go with someone, right? Wouldn't that be a laugh, James Potter without a date to Hogsmeade or a date for Valentines Day, the guys would have a field day. But then again, it might impress Lily if I show her that I'd rather go alone than without her. Yeah, I'll ask her -nicely- and when, no, if she says no I'll just not go with anyone else. If that wont help then nothing will_. With that comforting thought he fell into a deep slumber.

-

James woke up later that night when Sirius emptied a bucket of... something, over his head.

"Dinner time" Sirius said in a sing-song voice

"Hey Sirius, come here, I want to show you something" James said while trying to figure out the best method of decapitation he could perform.

"Sorry James, I'm not interested"

"Why not?"

"I like women"

James jumped out of bed and tackled Sirius to the ground.

"Oh James" Sirius groaned

"Shut up. I'm not gay"

"Yes James, yes, YES"

"Yes what?" Remus asked as he walked in to see James and Sirius covered in the sticky substance that Sirius had poured over James and rolling around on the floor. "I'll just come back later then shall I?"

"No it's okay Moony, what did you want?"

"Nothing, I was just wondering why Sirius was screaming"

"Atleast you didn't have to hear him moaning" James said making a disgusted face

Remus laughed and walked out of the room.

James stood up to see Sirius grinning at him.

"You might want to shower before you come down to dinner Prongs" Sirius smirked

"What is this stuff?" James asked

"Some of what I cleaned out of cauldrons in detention yesterday, I decided to keep it, never know when you might need cauldron filth.

James just shook his head and went into the bathroom to shower.

--oOoOoOoOoOo--

Lily sat in the Great Hall eating dinner with Monica who was chatting to her about something or other while she pretended to listen, her mind was on other things. _I wonder why Potter wasn't in class today, he is lazy but he doesn't usually miss a whole day of classes, I hope he alright. Wait a second!? Why do I care whether he's alright, I hate him. Don't I? _Her mind was telling her that she still hated him but she couldn't help but notice his nicer qualities._ I did apologise and sort of give him a chance, maybe I should? No! Not yet, he hasn't earnt it. _Lily nodded to herself.

"-And then I poured the stuff on himto wake him up" she heard Sirius say before he burst into laughter

"It wasn't funny Sirius" Potter protested. Wait, wasn't he sick or something? She looked up and saw Potter sitting there laughing, healthy as ever.

"Potter" she said icily "why weren't you in class today?"

"Someone," he looked pointedly at Sirius "thought it would be funny to turn of my alarm and not wake me up for class and by the time I woke up there was just no point in going"

"Hey you have to admit that it was pretty funny Prongs"

"Shut up" Remus said and elbowed Sirius in the ribs

"Uh, ah, I mean James" Sirius stammered

Lily's curiosity was peaked. "What does he mean Potter?"

"Um, nothing, don't worry about it, inside joke, you wouldn't get it"

"I'm sure I would"

"Nah, it's a _joke_ Lily," Sirius said "but you wouldnt know what they are would you?"

"Sirius" James whispered fiercly while giving him another elbow to the ribs

"Don't worry _Potter" _she put emphasis on the word "I can handle myself just fine watch"

She stood next to James and said "James, would you like to come with me to Hogsmeade?"

"I'd love to" he said

"Oh, that's a pity. It was just a joke" She laughed "see Sirius, I can make jokes"

As she sat down Lily saw the amount of Hurt in Potter's eyes. _Oh shit_ She thought _why did I do that?_.

For the second time in two days James got up and stormed out of the Great Hall.

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**Sorry again for the ridiculously short chapter, im kind of stuck for ideas at the moment and am finding it hard to write. you have probably noticed that there are mistakes in this story that should not be there, i do not have a beta and have just been writing and checking myself. if anyone would like to beta for me please let me know, i dont need a fast turn around and ideas are welcome. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BETA.**

**thanks**

**jousche**


	7. Miss Cruel Evans and Mr Idiot Potter

**Another chapter! wow, that's rather odd... again i still need a beta so please excuse minor errors. hope you enjoy and please review, it really does mean a lot to know what people think.**

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James walked out of the Great Hall in a fury. _After everything I've done and how much I've changed for her, how could she do that to me? I thought that maybe she cared at least a little. Why would she do that? Has all the effort I've put in been for nothing? All that time wasted?_ James fumed as he walked into the common room and up to his dorm. He flopped down onto his bed with a sigh.

After lying in misery for a few minutes James heard the door creak softly as it was opened

Sirius walked into the room "James?" he asked tentatively "are you okay?"

"Marvelous thanks" James replied sarcastically

"James we need to talk about this"

"I don't want to talk about it"

"Okay, do you want to do something else instead?"

"How about die?" James said miserably

"Or… I do still have that cauldron filth…" Sirius said suggestively

"You know what, a prank sounds great right about now" James said, brightening up a little

"Alright," Sirius exclaimed happily "I'll go get Mooney to help us think of something"

"No need, just tell him and Wormtail to get here as quick as they can, I already have something in mind" James said while getting out a quill and some parchment.

"Okay" Sirius said and ran out the door

_Hmm _Sirius thought too himself _I wonder if Monica will like this prank. I have to tell James to make sure we can avoid her getting any of it. Yeah, we'll just hit the Slytherins. This is going to be great, James is helping in pranks again; he's coming back. But, this is going to hurt his relationship with Lily, oh well; it's what he wants to do._

Sirius got into the Great Hall just as most people were leaving it. He walked over to the Gryffindor table to see Remus sitting patiently while Peter finished eating, Lily and Monica were sitting as far away as they could. _Good _he thought_ Lily won't like hearing this._

"Masters Mooney and Wormtail" Sirius began in a mock pompous voice "Your presence is requested immediately in our dormitory by Master Prongs"

"Well Master Padfoot" Remus said in the same voice "We shall attend him at once"

With that the three laughed and walked quickly out of the Great Hall.

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_Oh dear, I am so stupid_ Lily thought _how could I do that to him? There was no way he deserved that, next time I see him I'll have to apologise and try to figure out a way to make to up to him. Maybe_ she shuddered _maybe I _will _go to Hogsmeade with him, I may just have to. _She grimaced.

"I wonder what that was all about." Monica said

"What?" Lily asked

"Sirius just walked up to Remus and Peter and called them weird names and went on about something or other in a weird voice"

"What were the names?" Lily asked, wondering if she could maybe figure out what they had meant earlier

"Well Sirius called Remus and Peter 'Masters Mooney and Wormtail' thought I'm not sure who was who, then Remus called Sirius Master Padfoot and Sirius said something about a Master Prongs. I wonder what it all means."

"Potter must be prongs" Lily sated "I wonder why they have nicknames"

"Maybe you should call _Potter _James instead Lily, it might make up for what you said earlier"

_Yes, then I wont feel like I need to go to Hogsmeade with him. _"That's a good idea Monica, maybe I will. Alright, are you done, we should go back up to the common room now"

Monica nodded and they walked up to the seventh floor. That walked up to the Fat Lady and Lily said "slore", the Fat Lady laughed and let them in.

They could hear outrageous laughter coming from the boys' staircase and then heard someone who could only have been Sirius give a poor attempt at an evil cackle.

"I wonder what they're doing" Monica said

"I don't want to know" Lily said and walked upstairs to study

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Sirius let out a rather loud evil cackle.

"Wow Sirius that was really bad" Peter said

"Bad for society when the kids get into it" Sirius responded

The others laughed uproariously again.

"Okay" James said, wiping tears of laughter form his eyes "We need to finish the prank. Do we want to do it at breakfast or in the dorms?"

"Why not both?" Sirius asked

"Do you have enough?" Remus asked

"Do you know how long I was cleaning for?" Sirius asked rhetorically "That reminds me, how was detention with Dumbledore James?"

"It was good. He helped me write definitions of 'slore' and suggested stuff to put in to make it sound better. Then we chose one and he's going to have it put in the dictionary"

"No way" Sirius said

"Yep" James said proudly "okay, we need to go set it up. Remus and Peter, you stay here and Sirius and I will go with the cloak and the map and set it up.

"Alright" Remus said "what's the cover if people ask where you are"

"James is still upset and I'm here comforting him" Sirius supplied "It's true as well, except for that we aren't up here"

James got the cloak and the map out from their hiding spots in the room and disappeared with Sirius. They walked cautiously down the stairs and over to the portrait hole where Remus went out for a moment so they had a chance to leave before he went back in. They walked down to the Great Hall checking the map routinely to make sure that they wouldn't run into anyone.

"Okay, how do you want to do this?" Sirius asked

"I want it to fan out so that it hits more people" James replied while getting his wand out

They levitated the cauldron filth mixture up above the Slytherin table and set it so that it would shower over them.

"Good" James said when they had finished "Now we need to do the same in the Slytherin dorms"

"Why don't we just put it into their water pipes?" Sirius asked

"Yeah, we can use that tunnel" James said

They walked up to the second floor and slipped into a bathroom.

"Who's that" came a voice from one of the cubicles

"It's just us Myrtle" Sirius said as they took of the cloak

"Oh, hello Sirius, James" She said

Sirius bent down and hissed at the engraved snake.

James shuddered at the sound "how do you do that?" he asked

"You know where I come from James"

"Of course, the _great _Salazar Slytherin"

"That's funny" Sirius chuckled "a true Gryffindor and a true Slytherin, the best of friends"

"Haha, yeah, who would've thought it" James replied cautiously, aware of Sirius' hatred of his heritage

They slipped into the Chamber of Secrets and made their way to the pipes that gave water to the Slytherins and filled them with the sludge.

"Good thing no one knows that we found this place" James said

"Yeah, who knows what they'd send after us"

They made their way back past the main chamber and Sirius walked up to the statue of Salazar Slytherin and kicked it. He heard a hiss '_Yes master?_' he recoiled and made his way back over to James

"You alright?" James asked "You look a bit shaken"

"Fine" Sirius said "let's get back to the common room"

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Lily tossed in bed and rolled over again. She looked at her clock: 2:30. _Great _she thought_ now I can't sleep._ She felt amazingly guilty about everything that had happened with James. She knew that what she had done was wrong and she regretted it but what shocked her was that she didn't regret it so much because it was wrong but because it must have made James hate her. _He really has changed since Christmas, and all of those changes were for me, I'm sure of it. He put in all that effort and I've ruined it for him. This is so wrong! I don't want him to hate me! Wait, what? I hate him, right?_ With that thought Lily slipped into a fitful sleep.

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Sirius awoke from a fitful dream of a huge snake chasing James around who had only a sword to protect himself. He looked out the window and saw that the sun was already up; he yawned and slowly got out of bed. He saw James picking up a towel and grabbed his own and ran into the bathroom before James could get in there.

"Hey!" James said "I was going to use that"

"Ha! I win" Sirius said while locking the door

"But by the time you're done there'll be no time left for anyone else to use the bathroom"

"True" Sirius said before turning on the shower and starting to sing

Forty-five minutes later Sirius walked out of the bathroom to find three smiling Marauders in front of him.

"What?" he asked cautiously

The other three laughed and next thing he knew, Sirius was covered in sludge and James was already into the bathroom.

"But I thought you said there wouldn't be time" Sirius said, confused

"Good thing we got up two hours early then isn't it" Remus said knowingly

Sirius let out a frustrated moan. _Of course, James would have wanted to get him back for the day before._ Sirius said uncomfortably on James' bed letting the sludge fall all over his nicely laid out robes until it was his turn to shower again._ That will show him!_

-

The Marauders walked into the Great Hall just before Lily and Monica and they all went and sat down.

"James" Lily said

"What?" He asked dejectedly

"I'm sorry for yesterday; that was completely wrong of me. I know that you've been changing and I think it was for me and I completely ruined that for you."

James looked at her sheepishly and said "That's fine Lily?" he signaled Sirius to come closer

"We have to get them out of here" he whispered

"Monica" Sirius said "Would you come with me for a moment"

"Sure"

"Too late" Remus said as the Slytherins walked in to the room carrying a putrid stench.

The entire great hall erupted with laughter as the Slytherins sat down at their table. Sirius flicked his wand casually and the sludge started to spray out over the Slytherin table.

"Potter" Lily growled

"Lily, I'm so sorry, I was just so upset yesterday, Sirius wanted to cheer me up so…" he finished lamely

"I thought you had changed" Lily said with a hurt look in her eyes before running out of the Great Hall.

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James sat in Herbology two weeks later with Sirius on one side and Lily across the table due to their seating plan: everyone chose a partner and they were put into groups of four with their partner. Sirius couldn't be happier and he and Monica constantly shared secretive looks but for James it was torture. Lily still refused to talk to him which was worse than anything else she had put him through. Even when Lily was yelling at him James felt okay because he got to hear her voice but now he never heard her speak and it was driving him insane. Lily seemed to realise this and made sure not to speak when she was near him so as not to give in to him.

Valentines Day had just gone past and he hadn't even had the heart to ask anyone to spend the day with him. He turned down numerous requests as politely as he could; he even had to say no to a much more modest Melanie Fisk. He thought long and hard but could not come up with any logical reason why Lily meant so much to him. At every turn she would shoot down his hopes whereas every other girl he talked to would give him anything he wanted (it was scary when the first years tried it) but he couldn't accept anything from them, he only wanted Lily.

He had spent the last two weeks having fun under the pretence that Lily couldn't get any angrier at him anyway but he knew that if he didn't try again to change that she'd still hate him when they finished school for the summer. _If she still hates me when she leaves then what's to stop her finding someone over the holidays, after all, they do go for a while_. He knew that he had to change if he wanted Lily to stop hating him but he couldn't help feel upset that Lily wouldn't talk to him unless he changed but wasn't willing to change at all for him, _then again _he thought _she's not the one who's in love_.

He sighed

"Mr. Potter are you alright?" Professor Drake asked him

"No, why?" James asked

"Well you keep sighing and it's interrupting my lesson, do you need to go to sick bay?" the Professor asked

"This is a sickness that I don't think even Poppy can heal" he said, looking at Lily pointedly

"_Madam Pomfrey_ is quite accomplished, I think you should go see her" The Professor said, making it quite clear that he didn't have a choice

"Shall I walk him up there Professor?" Sirius asked hopefully

"I'm sure he knows where it is Mr. Black, he's been up there often enough. And besides, I can't be sure whether I'd see you again this lesson if I let you leave."

Sirius grinned.

James stood up and walked out of the greenhouse but rather than going to the sickbay he went and sat under his favourite tree near the lake.

It was only early afternoon but the moon was already up. He noted that it was nearly full. _At least I have something to look forward to_ he thought.

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**Whoops, now he's in trouble.. hope you enjoyed it**

**PLEASE REVIEW!!**

**thanks**

**jousche**


	8. Regrets

**Oh my, how long has it been since I updated? two years maybe, anyway, my writing has improved drastically since last time you would have heard from me, this one is quite short, but at the same time, I thought that I should post it anyway. I have also re-done the first chapter so please have a look. **

**Please read, I hope you enjoy it, and most of all please forgive my long absence.**

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James was woken from a half sleep by the bell that signalled the end of class. Not long afterward he spied the other three Marauders walking toward him through slitted eyes. He sighed deeply and tried to ignore them, it was not that he didn't feel like talking. Just that he knew they would make him. What he hadn't expected was to be startled fully awake by the three of them picking him up and bodily throwing him into the lake. He came up wet, spluttering and surprised to see the serious looks fixed on their faces, in place of the grins that he had expected to find.

He waded out of the water and came to stand before them, sopping wet and shivering. The water wasn't warm even in summer, and during winter it was freezing.

"That's enough James," Remus said, "You've been pulling pranks nonstop for two weeks. It's not that we don't enjoy having you back but at the same time we can see what this is doing to your chances with Lily. If you don't stop soon you'll lose any chance that you've got, or will ever have. Is she worth it or not?"

James looked to Sirius and Peter for support but Sirius just looked back at him stubbornly, if Peter did look a little upset.

James sighed, "You're right, but I tried so hard-"

"For two weeks," Sirius cut in, "you tried hard for two weeks and Lily was already beginning to see a new you. I understand that you don't want to have to fully change but at the same time I don't think you will have to. If you change enough to show Lily that you're willing to be a better person, she may even come the rest of the way by herself."

"I think that's probably the most mature thing I have ever heard you say," James replied, trying to joke his way out of the situation even as he realised that Sirius was right. He threw his hands up into the air and said, "You know what, you're right. But why did you all let me do this if you thought it would be bad for me."

"Because we were selfish," Peter said quietly, nobody spoke as he continued, "we were so happy to have you back that we didn't like to consider what it would do to you."

James looked at each of them in turn and was shown a confirmation in their eyes. He knew that his friends, true friends to the last would help him through this, and that somehow they were still going to manage to have fun along the way.

Lily watched James walk out of the greenhouse with a feeling of satisfaction; it served him right for reverting to his stupid egotistical ways when he could see that she was willing to give him a chance. To be honest she could scarcely believe he had changed at all. True enough, he still didn't mess up his hair or flirt with other girls, but that seemed more a result of his misery than through any conscious effort.

The fact that he had all his hard work ruined by a simple act of nonchalance on Lily's behalf was irrelevant, if he went back to pulling pranks when faced with the slightest hurdle then how could he expect her to believe that he had changed at all.

Lily pushed thoughts of James- _Potter_ aside and went back to her work, it was bad enough that he had made a show of changing for her when he hadn't, she wouldn't let him ruin her schoolwork as well. She fixed her attention more fully on the lesson and tried to grasp what was going on (Herbology had never been her strongest point), they were supposed to be learning how to successful extract pods from a particularly violent species of the Venus Fly Trap; they essentially had to freeze it in place with a spell and the try to extract the pod before the plant gained use of its limbs again. Needless to say, Ja- _Potter_ wasn't the only one sent off to the sick bay that lesson. The new nurse Madame Pomfrey had only been there a week and already Potter and the others were well acquainted with her.

The lesson finished and Lily had to pull Monica away from a blushing Sirius who had seemed to be undertaking similar changes to Potter but to a much greater effect, it probably helped that Monica was not quite as opposed to pranks (or as she called it '_fun_') as Lily was.

'LilyLilyLilyLilyLily,' Monica whispered as they left the classroom, 'you'll never guess what Sirius just told me. I hardly know whether to believe him or not, surely he must have been lying, but you didn't see the look in his eyes when he said it!'

'What?' Lily asked.

'Oh right,' Monica said, slightly abashed, 'Sirius Just told me that he has never done more than kiss a girl, ever.'

Lily smiled sympathetically, 'I wonder how many girls he tricked into his bed with that one?'

'Lily!' Monica said, looking slightly injured.

'Well think about it, how many girls have claimed to have slept with him, they can't all be lying.'

'But how many of them have been able to describe him?'

Lily shuddered visibly for the effect, 'I neither know nor want to know any details regarding Sirius unless they involve him when fully clothed.'

'Oh come on Lily, he's amazing. But I guess you're too caught up in James to notice,' Monica teased.

Lily glared a reply, 'Why did he tell you that anyway?'

'Well, he asked me if I would like to Hogsmeade with him in a few months,' Monica blushed slightly.

'And you refused I hope?' Lily demanded.

'Well, not quite, I said I would think about it, he has been trying. I mean, I know it's only been two weeks but the fact that he took the pigs flying thing to heart and then used it to show how much he cared was really sweet. That, and I said that to him before Christmas, if he didn't mean it then surely he would have found someone else in that time.'

To this Lily had no reply. Everything Monica said seemed right, and now that she thought about it Sirius had also laid off flirting, a fact which no few girls were complaining about.

'Go for it Mon,' Lily said softly, cutting into her best friend's rant, 'if you think it might work out then go for it.' Lily didn't mention the fact that she had seen so many similar changes in Potter before she had ruined it for him. As a general rule she wasn't inclined to hate anyone, or even dislike them. The fact that James pushed her so much made it easy to try and hate him. But in truth he did have a lot of redeeming qualities and with her general ruling of never judging people without knowing more of their background, she couldn't bring herself to truly hate him, or even dislike him. It was true that he frequently did things to annoy her, but at the same time it also took a lot to not laugh when he pulled a toned down prank, or made some particularly witty remark that glowed with underlying intelligence. She knew that he was no average class clown and she thought that he deserved the chance to show her why he behaved the way he did. . As a general rule she wasn't inclined to hate anyone, or even dislike them, so maybe she should just give Potter a chance to prove her wrong, or right, if that were to be the case.

Having set her mind on her decision she let her mind come back to the present. Monica was still raving about Sirius and how much he had changed and how excited she was to tell him that she would go to Hogsmeade with and had not noticed that Lily had been on another planet all together. They looked over to the great willow tree on the bank of the lake just in time to watch James being thrown into the ice cold water by the other three. Monica laughed outright and Lily found it hard to suppress a giggle. What surprised them both was that the three boys were not laughing as James came out, but talking to him in what seemed a very serious manner. The bell started ringing for their next class and Lily dragged Monica off so that they would not be late, but she could not help but look back over her should and think about how she would broach the subject of an armistice to James.

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**Well, what do you all think? drop me a review and let me know if you like the new stlye of writing.**

Nightwing27 - thanks for taking the time to read through it, I appreciate the effort.

Carola-x - sorry this has been so long coming, I hope you enjoyed it all the same.

**Thanks, Josh**


	9. A Magical Day Pt1

**Hey! New chapter, in only a week or 2, wow, this one is in two parts, I thought I'd put up what I had.**

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James sat on his four-poster bed with the other three Marauders sprawled likewise on their own. They sat planning the greatest prank that Hogwarts would ever have seen. James had taken the advice of the other three on board but this was a prank that had to be pulled, it was necessary.

It wouldn't be the largest prank or the smelliest, it would even be aimed at the Slytherins, but James was sure that it would be the most satisfying thing he had ever done.

'No we have to aim it there!' Sirius exclaimed loudly.

'SHH!' the other three sprang in instantly, 'we can't have everyone know what's going on Sirius.'

Their voices lowered and they continued debating the technicalities of the prank, silencing the majority of Sirius' suggestions as being crude, violent or thoroughly stupid. By the end of their three hour planning session James was finally satisfied. Everything was fully planned, now all they had to do was go down and set it up. He reached under his bed and opened the secret compartment that held his Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder's Map.

'Remus, you'd better come with me this time,' James said.

'What about me?' Sirius whined.

'We have to be quiet Sirius; I doubt you'll manage,'

'No way! I can to be quiet when I want to,' Sirius sulked.

Remus laughed, 'If it means that much then you go Sirius, but remember if we get caught this time it's not just the professors who'll be angry with you.'

Sirius grumbled a little but then brightened up a bit, 'James guess what!' he demanded.

'What now?' James asked, starting to get a little impatient.

'I asked Monica if she wanted to go to Hogsmeade with but next time!'

'And...?'

'And, she said she'd think about it' Sirius said in giddy triumph.

'That's... Awesome Sirius, James replied, 'weren't you kind of after a yes though?'

'Of course, but she's actually thinking about it. Before the holidays she said she never would. And now she is thinking about it. Only one small step from there to a yes. We'd only be going as friends, but it's only one small step from friends to dating. And we'd only be dating, but it's only one small step from dating to- Guys?' Sirius looked up from counting off steps on his fingers to find nobody listening to him, 'Guys?' He ran and caught up with them just before they left the room, 'Not funny.'

James threw the Cloak over the two of them and pulled out the map, Remus opened the door for them and feigned having forgotten something in case anyone was looking. They manoeuvred over to the portrait hole which Remus opened after making sure that Lily was looking.

'Remus,' Lily exclaimed, where are you going? You know you aren't allowed out at this time! You'll make us lose points, it's bad enough that Potter and Black lose most of the points we earn without you doing it too.'

Under the cloak James grimaced, he knew that she was probably only saying it because of the way he had acted recently, but he also knew that there was no way he could fault her reasoning.

'Sorry Lily, I just needed to walk for a bit, I have a lot on my mind.'

By this point James and Sirius were off on their way to set up the greatest prank in the history of Hogwarts. James felt terrible after what Lily had said, but now he made firm his resolve that he needed to change. He could just imagine how good it would feel to contribute to the winning of the House Cup rather than being the reason they lost it, how good it would be to spend every weekend with his friends, Lily included, rather than in detentions. As fun as it was to pull pranks and flirt with near strangers, he was beginning to realise that that fun wasn't worth the detentions, wasn't worth the severe looks, wasn't worth losing Lily. He made even more firm his resolve to become a better person. He didn't intend to stop enjoying life, but he though t he may be able to enjoy himself just as much by doing things the right way, or Lily's way at least.

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'Remus,' Lily exclaimed, where are you going? You know you aren't allowed out at this time! You'll make us lose points, it's bad enough that Potter and Black lose most of the points we earn without you doing it too.' She felt a little bit sorry for saying that about James when she intended to give him another chance, but he wasn't in the room and Remus normally didn't do anything so irresponsible.

'Sorry Lily, I just needed to walk for a bit, I have a lot on my mind.'

'Oh,' Lily replied, sorry to have intruded, 'would you like to talk about it?' she and Remus were not close really, but she felt that she had to make the offer at least.

'Well, to be honest, I would love to,' Remus replied, shocking her slightly.

She led him over to a quieter part of the common room and sat him down, 'What's the matter?'

'Well,' Remus replied, 'I'm worried about James. He has always taken you very seriously, perhaps more than he know himself, and now that he's tried so hard and messed up, well, his confidence is all but ruined. I'm worried that he's going to try something stupid to make it up to you, and that he's going to embarrass you and himself to try and show that he cares. The worst thing is that I think he really wants to change, not so much because of you, but because he knows it's the right thing to do. He probably won't even ask you out at the end of all this; he just wants to improve himself as a person and have you acknowledge him and maybe even let him be your friend.'

Lily just looked at him, unable to believe what she'd heard. She knew that James had tried to win her over by attempting to change, but she had never thought that he may try to change just because he thought it was the right thing to do. Now she knew that she had to give him a chance to prove himself, she couldn't possibly deny someone who was trying to become a better person, regardless of what previous wrongs they had to their name.

'Thank you for telling me this Remus,' Lily said softly, 'you don't need to worry, I didn't realise that he was changing for himself, I thought he was just trying to win me over, but if he really wants to change then I will give him the chance that he needs.'

'Thank you Lily,' Remus said simply.

-xXxXxXx-

Lily turned over to look at her alarm clock: 12:07, she had brought the alarm clock from home and enchanted it so that it would work within the grounds of Hogwarts, where electronics usually failed. Now she wished that she couldn't look at it, she rolled back over and tried to will herself to sleep, fruitlessly. She still felt incredibly guilty about the way that she hadn't given James a chance. It was not as though he hadn't tried, just that he hadn't tried hard enough, or been willing to overcome any hurdles that came along the way, but at the same time, if he was trying to become a better person then shouldn't Lily try to help him at every step rather than making it harder?

She tossed and turned for another hour before she finally found some inner peace. _Tomorrow,_ she thought, _I'll apologise and let him know that I'll support his change._ With that, she quickly slipped into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

Lily awoke to a peculiar fragrance, but a familiar one. She could not quite will her eyes to open, but she was sure it was something she had smelled before. She could not quite place the smell; was it spring time, early in the morning? Or maybe the smell of a new book? No, but whatever it was, it was very nice. Moments later her alarm rang, she reflexively reached over to turn it off, but found her hand blocked by something soft.

Unable to suppress her curiosity any longer she opened her eyes and the world turned red. Her bed, nightstand, floor, everything was covered in vivid red roses. At first she was utterly bewildered, but slowly it dawned on her that this must have been James' doing. Her conversation with Remus the previous night came back to her, _I'm worried that he's going to try something stupid to make it up to you, and that he's going to embarrass you and himself to try and show that he cares. _This must have been what he was talking about, and he was right, it was incredibly embarrassing, how could James think that this would win her over? More than anything, she was beginning to get annoyed.

She looked at her nightstand and saw a folded sheet of parchment with her name written on it,

_Lily,_

_Please don't take this the wrong way; I'm not trying to embarrass you._

_The roses are just to show you the way, please follow them today. It would mean a lot to me,_

_Potter, or if it's not too bold, James._

As Lily finished reading the note all of her annoyance evaporated. He'd managed to pinpoint exactly what she would feel and counter it. When he used his intelligence for something other than pranks a lot could certainly be achieved. To be honest, his thoughtfulness and intelligence left her somewhat in awe.

Lily sat up slowly and looked around her; sure enough there was a trail of roses a few inches thick leading out the door. Thankfully, James had been thoughtful enough to remove all of the thorns.

Not letting excitement and apprehension dictate her action, she got out of bed at her usual pace, walked into the bathroom and showered, maybe just a little quicker that she normally would, and perhaps she skipped putting on any make up at all to save a little time. She did however brush her hair dry with one of the magical brushes that the bathroom contained, leaving it beautiful and silky. She stepped out of the bathroom and packed her bag with the books that she would need for the day. Wednesday was definitely her favourite day; Charms first up, then Transfiguration, a long break over the early afternoon then Muggle studies last. The only downside had been that James was in every single one of her classes, and that was definitely not an accident, but now, it didn't seem as though that would continue to be a bad thing. If he could manage to change then maybe they could get along.

She picked up her bag and walked out the door, secretly glad to see the trail of roses continue out of the dormitory and down toward the common room. As she walked, she looked behind her and saw that the roses were getting up of their own accord and organising themselves into beautiful bunches and filling vases along the walls. She walked down into the common room and tried to ignore the stares that she was sure everyone would be giving her. When she dared a glance she was surprised to find the opposite, everyone had looked up when she first entered to see who it was but they had now all gone back to what they were doing. This lack of curiosity certainly wasn't normal, she wondered if James had somehow convinced them to act differently. If he had put this much effort into just the preliminary stages of whatever this was, what would happen at the end of it?

She continued out of the common room and followed the roses down two flights of stairs then stopped as she saw them curve through a side passage before continuing down. It didn't make much sense to her to waste time going around, but remembering James' note, she turned through the side passage. On a pedestal in the corridor was another note, with a single white rose laying atop it. She pick up the rose and inhaled its scent deeply before picking up the note, it read:

_Lily,_

_Thank you for going around, I had a chat with Peeves and I couldn't convince him to move today's prank elsewhere, so I had to lead the path around him._

_I'm glad you listened to my first note, and I hope the fact that you have followed this route at its advice means that I can sign this one,_

_James._

Despite the voice of reason whispering none too quietly in her ear, Lily couldn't help the fact that her heart fluttered slightly. No one had ever done something this incredible for her, not even the wildest of James' proclamations of love had been so thoughtful. Reason finally won its way back into her mind and she looked at the situation a little more cynically; James was not stupid, it may have taken him a while to realise that he needed to grow up to have her pay him any attention, but that didn't mean that he wasn't just trying a new way to make her fall for him. In fact, she was sure that when she arrived at the end of this trail of roses he would once again proclaim his undying love, which she could not accept. The more she thought about it, the more she realised that this must all just be another one of James' pranks, even if it was a little more romantic than usual. Satisfied with her reasoning, she started walking once again, she was half tempted to leave the trail, but two things stopped her. A little voice within her said, _you promised to give him a chance,_ she tried to ignore it but the truth as well as the fact that the roses led along the same path that she always took to the great hall anyway gave her the small excuse she needed to keep following. Not that she wanted to, of course, but if it was on her way then she may as well. The little voice in her head sighed, probably at her stubbornness, but she didn't care. She wouldn't deliberately make it hard for him to change but at the same time she wasn't about to make it easy. Changing was something he would have to really want, or it wouldn't stick. She would help him change, but really, he needed to help himself.

This train of thought carried her down another five flights of stairs and before she knew it she was walking into the Great Hall. The sight that was there to greet her was subtle. To begin with, she didn't notice anything different, aside from the enormous banner above the Head Table that simply said 'change'. She sat down in her usual spot at the end of the Gryffindor table, the first one there as always. She didn't notice that anything was amiss until the hall was mostly full. Lily had always been introverted and shy so she didn't know too many of the people, even in her own house. She had always thought it strange that the division between Houses caused so much strife, when really they were all the same, but today, somehow, for some reason, everyone was mingling. There were people of every house sitting at every table, the Slytherins were less inclined to join the other but aside from that it was universal.

Lily sat eating her breakfast in wonder. Sirius, Remus and Peter arrived five minutes before first lesson as usual, but for once James was not with them. She wondered what could be keeping him from their company, she also wondered how he had manage to get this 'Change Day' through on such short noticed. Monica came over and sat down after having been walked to the Great Hall by Sirius.

'Hi Lily,' Monica said brightly, 'isn't his great!' she exclaimed, indicating the Hall around them.

'It's... Amazing' Lily could think of no other word for it, 'how-'

'James,' Monica cut in, ' James spoke to Dumbledore and organised it.'

'Wow,' was all that Lily could form into words.

'Yeah, it's pretty cool,' Monica agreed, 'but enough of that, you have to hear what Sirius told me, it's so amazing...'

Having heard the word 'Sirius', Lily knew that it would be quite a while before Monica would finish her current story, she also knew that all she needed to do was nod and pretend to pay attention while she thought about more important things; Monica's stories all followed the same general pattern, Sirius did something incredibly sweet, and Monica was shocked by how much he changed, then they got even closer to kissing.

Lily let her thoughts wander to what else was in store for her throughout the course of the day. She couldn't wait to confront James in Charms, and see what he was up to. She still wasn't convinced that this wasn't all some ploy to gain her affection. But she did need to give him the chance to change for the better, she knew how important her approval was to him, and that if she didn't let him know that she was giving him a chance, he would give up and revert to his former self, if not worse.

'-and then,' Monica continued as Lily came back to the present, 'Lily! You weren't listening to me! Sirius kissed me!'

'What!' Lily all but yelled.

'I know, isn't it wonderful,' Monica said excitedly, 'my lips are still tingling, he was so sweet about it, it wasn't passionate or heated or anything, just soft and sweet.'

'But Mon, he's a womanizer; he's slept with half the grade!'

'Lily, haven't you been listening to anything I've told you? He's hasn't slept with anyone, I was his first kiss for Merlin's sake. He is one of the sweetest guys I've ever met!'

'Oh...' Lily didn't have any reply at all to make to Monica's passionate statement, 'Well, good for you Mon.'

By this point they had both finished their food and Lily got up to leave the Great Hall. 'Are you coming Mon?'

'Well,' Monica blushed, 'Sirius offered to walk me there, you don't mind do you?'

'No problem,' Lily feigned nonchalance and got up to leave. She followed the roses out of the Hall and up toward the Charms room, she was the first one there and was not entirely surprised to find a note awaiting her. She picked it up and read it,

_Lily,_

_Please excuse my absence from classes today, I have already spoken with Dumbledore and the Professors, they are fine with it._

_This all has to go perfectly and if I see you before the end of the day it won't._

_Thank you for understanding,_

_James._

She didn't know whether to be furious that he was skipping out on classes or happy that he had spoken with the professors about it first. She settled for something in between, she would tell him off for skipping class but then admit that it was good that he was going about it the right way, not that it was right at all, but at least he'd made a small step in the right direction.

Lily bent down and picked up one of the roses, she smelt its beautiful fragrance and placed it in her bag after applying a charm that would extend its life somewhat. Soon afterwards Monica and Sirius (who must have eaten in record time, or not at all) came around the corner hand in hand. Lily was not at all surprised to see this, but she certainly didn't expect to see the usually unflappable Sirius blushing.

'So it's official then?' Lily asked.

Monica nodded and then came over and pulled her aside, 'I know that it's really soon and that I've only really known him properly for a month but it feels right Lily. Please support me, it will mean so much to him.'

'Of course I support you Mon,' Lily said loudly enough for Sirius to hear, 'you know I trust your judgement, that's why I'm giving James a chance after all. If Sirius is good enough for you then I'm happy for you,' she lowered her voice, ' just don't let him take you to bed, please.'

Monica blushed, 'Lily! You know I wouldn't do that.'

Lily smiled; it had mainly been to stir Monica up. She was glad to have had the chance to say that she was giving James a chance in a way that wasn't direct but so that it would certainly reach his ears, in fact, she would be surprised if he hadn't heard about it within half an hour.

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**So? What did you think? Please leave a review, it means a lot. Constructive criticism is very welcome.**


	10. A Magical Day Pt 2

**Hmm, hello, not sure if I'm game to show my face after how long it's taken me to write this. the day is still not over, but I've spent a fair while on this and my brain has about had it. I hope you enjoy it! Also, they've updated the site since I was last on it and made it even easier to review, the butteon is sitting there begging to be clicked, so please do...**

**Disclaimer: Anything related to the 'Harry Potter' Novels or Films is not mine. everything inventive and amazing otherwise I reserve the right to claim as my own, any parts that are neither Harry Potter related or excellent belong to my pet cat, and only he will take the blame :D**

**A Magical Day: Part Two**

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'Of course I support you Mon,' Lily said, 'you know I trust your judgement, that's why I'm giving James a chance after all. If Sirius is good enough for you then I'm happy for you'

It took all of James' self restraint not to exclaim or jump for joy; the idea behind the invisibility cloak _was_ to go unnoticed after all. He settled with grinning like an idiot and took solace in the fact that no one could see him. The idea for the 'Change Day' had been one of his more brilliant moves, it seemed to have shown Lily that not only was he willing to change, he was able to see what needed changing within the school and was willing to help implement it. He had seen the way that Lily had smiled when he had gone off at Melanie and in that instant, knew that she must share at least some of his views. Now that it was actually happening, he thought it would be difficult to keep up, but the inter-house relations were strained at best and if something were not done to help mend it, it could be more than just an occasional fight with the Slytherins.

James followed as students began to walk into the charms classroom he took advantage of Sirius and Remus' conveniently timed decision to be outrageously polite and refused to be the first through the door. The result was endless bowing and 'After You'-s, not to mention ample time for James to walk into the room and take his seat without bumping in to anyone. As he looked around him he was pleased to see that Professor Flitwick had set up the name cards as agreed and that everyone was looking thoroughly confused.

The professor climbed atop a pile of books behind his desk and cleared his throat, preparing to address the class.

'Each of you will notice a name card on a desk that belongs to you. For this lesson you will sit at that desk and every lesson for the remainder of the term it will be in a different place. I understand that you will all have preferred people to sit with so the cards will be moved in pairs to allow a small measure of familiarity but the idea is to get you all interacting with people you may not normally associate with.' Flitwick explained amidst groans from most of the students. All too quickly, however, there was a mad rush to see who would be sitting where and much chatter among people who knew each other only vaguely, or not at all.

James smiled to himself and turned to listen to the Ravenclaw girl, a girl with beautiful long brown hair and startling blue eyes, who had just sat behind him with her friend.

'Who will that be in front of us?' She asked and indicated James' 'empty' seat.

'I dunno,' replied her friend, a relatively plain girl who also wore her hair long, but not as successfully as Blue Eyes, 'go check.'

'No need ladies,' interceded none other than Sirius Black, who -James thought briefly- didn't seem to enjoy the looks they gave him as much as he once had. 'You find yourself in the illustrious company of myself and James Potter, Marauder Extraordinaire, Dashing, Brave, Handsome -James rolled his eyes-, aaannd: rather ill.' he stopped and scratched his temple, 'Hmm, that kind of ruined the effect a little didn't it, oh well, I could have let on that he couldn't spend more than 5 minutes off the toilet, and couldn't get to the hospital wing because it took more than five minutes and if he tried he wouldn't make it and... Wow that really ruined it... Well, anyway, nice to meet you.'

James sighed softly as Sirius held out his hand and Blue Eyes took it, laughing, while her friend looked on, unsure of whether to be aghast or envious.

'Lauren,' Blue Eyes, _Lauren_ replied, still chuckling softly, 'I hope he isn't too ill, I wouldn't want to miss meeting 'The Illustrious and rather ill James Potter'.'

'No he's fine, just needed a day off,' Sirius said, waving his hand as if dismissing the illness, 'I'm sure he'll be back in class tomorrow, I'm sure he'd love to meet you Lauren.' Sirius finished the statement with a smile that quite clearly showed that, yes, he knew she was staring at him, and no, he didn't mind.

_He obviously still like the attention if nothing else _James mused silently, finding it difficult not to partake in the conversation and, despite himself, interested in 'meeting' Lauren once he was 'better'. It would be refreshing to have a conversation with an obviously intelligent girl without running too severe a risk of being yelled at.

He returned his attention to the front of the class as Flitwick began talking animatedly about their newest assignment.

As part of this 'Change Day' that Po- that is to say Professor Dumbledore -he winked at the invisible James- has organised, your tasks will now be done is pairs, the aim of this task is to create an interesting piece of charm work that will cause something with an ordinary purpose to do something extraordinary.

_Oh great,_ James thought,_ how about something like, I don't know, the Marauders Map. _He knew immediately that this assignment would be a piece of cake.

'Okay,' Professor Flitwick continued, 'the pairs are as follows.'

At this, all of the students sat up a little straighter and began (the Sirius') or continued (the Lily's) to pay attention.

James' heart caught in his throat as Flitwick started reading through names, and with every pair called out, the chances of he and Lily being paired together increased.

'Sirius Black and Monica Primrose.'

'Yes!' Sirius exclaimed and James had to resist the urge to smack him on the back of the head for being so blatant. Thankfully Sirius looked over at Monica, who was blushing furiously, and sat down with a sheepish grin plastered on his face.

A few more names were called and finally there were only four people left.

'Lily Evans and,' James crossed his fingers and, though he would never admit it, his toes, legs, arms and eyes, 'Remus Lupin.'

James let out a breath he didn't realise he had been holding and stared blankly at his desk, he had been sure that everything was going to go according to his plans but apparently, fate had something else in store for him. He started paying attention again as Flitwick read out the name of his partner for the project.

'Lauren Belle'

James heard a mostly suppressed titter of excitement come from behind him and turned around to see none other than Blue Eyes smiling nearly as much as Sirius had been, wait, still was. Her eyes, which had been a deep, sapphire blue moments before, were now sparkling with highlights of- wait. Why was he looking with such curiosity and interest at a pair of eyes that weren't emerald green? He turned back toward the front of the room and sat for a moment, feeling emotions warring within him. He was hardly paying attention as Flitwick went over the requirements for the project, his thoughts whirling around within his head, trying to look at the future he had always imagined, a beautiful laugh sounding behind him and a young boy with black hair and green eyes smiling wickedly after having been caught committing a prank, but all of a sudden, the eyes were no longer green.

* * *

Lily held her breath as Flitwick got down to the last four names.

'Lily Evans and, 'Lily crossed her fingers and, though she would never admit it, her toes, legs, arms and eyes, 'Remus Lupin.'

'Yes,' she whispered, though maybe a little louder than she had intended to. Just because she hoped that Potter was changing didn't mean that she had to like the idea of doing a whole two person project just because he was too lazy to pull his finger out.

She listened to Flitwick's explanation of the project and its requirements with rapt attention, Charms had always been her favourite class and getting to design something entirely of her own choosing was not something she had expected. As if to top it all off, she was partnered with Remus, who was as intelligent as Potter but with a dedication to his work that was surprising for a Marauder.

The project simply required her to take an existing item and make it do something extra to make life more convenient. Her first thought was of a chair that changed its size, shape or plushness to ensure the comfort of the person or people sitting on it, so that they would never have to change position or stretch out their limbs when all they, okay, all _she_ wanted to do was sit and read.

Her next idea came in the form of a book to read while sitting in that chair that would turn its own pages or change the size or neatness of the script to make it more legible, something she knew would score her high marks as the Professor's would love being able to change someone like Black's illegible scrawl into something readable.

Her final thought was to bring some of her former life into the wizarding world, and set up a room where a wall could be charmed to play films like a Muggle cinema screen, something that she was sure most of the magical community would never have experienced.

She looked up as the rest of the students got up and started to file out of the room. Remus came over to her, smiling pleasantly.

'I bet you're glad we're partners,' he said with a laugh, 'I was terrified I'd be put with Sirius, he's probably more intelligent than most people in this school but I know that we would have ended up spending the final day of the project doing work that he had left until the last minute.'

Lily laughed good naturedly, 'That sounds like Black alright.' She walked out of the classroom with Remus in tow; it wasn't until she saw a trail of roses that she remembered the idea behind the rest of the day. She gave Remus an apologetic smile as he walked toward another class and she followed the path of roses that were laid out before her. Not that she wanted to, of course, it just so happened that she had a free period now and was planning to head to the Library and that was where the roses seemed to be headed anyway. Trust Potter to assume that she spent all of her free time in the Library and lead the trail there. Maybe she would just go to, well somewhere else, just to prove that he didn't know her schedule at all and that she too, could change and be spontaneous if she wanted to.

This train of thought carried her along the trail of roses toward the Library and she was so wrapped in ideas of going to have an early lunch that she nearly missed the note that she walked straight over. She heard a cough behind her and turned, surprised to see that nobody was there. It was then that she saw the note and scurried back to pick it up, just because it would have been rude not to, of course.

_Lily,_

_I hope you excuse the presumption that you would be heading to the Library, I did not intend to insinuate anything but we generally get homework from Charms and I know you like to keep on top of things._

_I understand (read: hope) that you are curious as to the purpose of today and I beg that you will allow your patience to carry you through the day, I think you will find that it will be rewarded if you see the day through._

_I also suggest that you pick up what you need from the Library then head down to an early lunch, you probably won't appreciate what I think Sirius intends to do, please believe me when I say that I tried to stop him, but it may be easier for you to deal with if you don't have to see it._

_James_

_PS: You may want to encourage Monica to avoid the Great hall at lunch time too, let's just say that Sirius can be a little on the extreme side._

Lily smiled and shook her head, wondering what Sirius could possibly be up to, and more than a little tempted to head down at lunch time just to see what would happen.

She continued on to the Library and checked out the books she thought may help for her Charms project then took the note's advice and went down to have a quick bite to eat, she sat at the Gryffindor table alone and thought about her plans for the term.

She had assumed that it would be half a year of arguing with Potter, struggling with her school work and just trying to find a quiet place to study where she wouldn't be interrupted by a prank or a fight that, as a Prefect, she would need to step in to prevent. To her surprise, the term was getting close to a month gone and she had yet to stop a prank, was seeing less fighting and could sit in the common room on any given night and study. She hadn't realised before that the example set by someone as popular as Potter could have such a strong impact. The younger boys looked at him and the other 'Marauders' as they had dubbed themselves, and saw them sitting peacefully in a corner doing what appeared to be homework. She was convinced that half the time they were just using the work as a cover while planning a prank but the end result was the same and she couldn't say that she minded when the end result was peace and quiet.

She popped one last bite of blueberry muffin into her mouth and strode out of the great hall, passing Sirius on her way out. She was surprised to see him carrying not only one textbook, but dragging a cart behind him filled with books. She had never thought he had been one to take study seriously but apparently having Monica as a partner was a far better motivation than the threat of detention. She was silently congratulating him on showing some maturity when she noticed that only the book he carried under his arm was Charms related. She wondered what he planned to do with the rest of them but upon thinking back to the note she had received, decided to leave before she saw something she didn't want to.

She heard a squealing sound coming from the Great Hall and quickened her pace, fairly sure that she knew what was happening, and even more sure that she did not want to be in that room.

She followed the trail of roses up a few flights of stairs and soon found herself back at the Library, she smile to herself before walking inside and sitting at a quiet table as far from the door as she could manage. She pulled out a quill and some parchment and started jotting down ideas for the project, starting with the chair, book and cinema. She added a few more items to the list then put it in her bag to show to Remus when they were on patrols together later in the week as part of their Prefect duties. She then took out the book she had found and began reading up on charms that could sense the user's intention, realising before too long that these sorts of charms were way above the level that she was familiar with, maybe she would have to stick to something simpler.

She looked at the clock on the wall and realised that Transfiguration was close to starting. She packed up her notes and made her way toward the classroom; she followed that path of roses to the Transfiguration classroom and stood waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. She listened as some Ravenclaw girls made their way to the classroom, gossiping about what had happened at lunch.

'-And then, he turned all of the books into _pigs_, as if that wasn't enough, he gave them all wings and yelled that 'if anyone has ever been told "when pigs fly", then here's your chance to do something you'd never dreamed possible.' and with that, he left the Great Hall, not to mention the mess the pigs were making.'

Lily couldn't help but smile. Sirius had shown the flying pig to Monica and obviously thought that everyone else should have a chance to try something different as well.

She returned her thoughts to the real world and continued to listen to the Ravenclaw conversation.

'You're so lucky Lauren,' one of them sighed, 'you get James potter as a partner for the whole term, he's single at the moment too, and that's not a chance that comes along every day.'

Lauren, a girl with gorgeous blue eyes and silky brown hair smiled shyly, blushing. She seemed to be everything Lily wished she could be, beautiful, intelligent, popular and genuinely nice. Lily certainly had brains, but not the kind of intelligence that allows people to excel without hard work. She also knew that she was not unattractive, but next to Lauren Belle, she would not be looked at twice.

_Then again, _she thought, a smile touching her lips, _I have got one of the most popular and attractive guys in the school guiding me along a magical day with a trail of roses..._ she felt her mind reel suddenly, _attractive?_ Where did that come from, sure he was trying to change but that hardly made him attractive!

She sighed and walked into the classroom as Professor McGonagall opened the door for them, Sirius obviously finding it hilarious to send a tripping jinx at peter as he walked toward the door, causing a blockage to form outside the doorway. She shook her head ruefully and looked around the classroom, not entirely surprised to find that there were name cards on all the tables. This time, however, the cards were in pairs that coincided with their pairs for Charms, she realised that they must be having joint effort projects for Transfiguration as well.

She was proven correct when McGonagall read out the same list that Flitwick had, and went straight into explaining their project: to perform a partial transfiguration to give something properties or abilities that it could not normally posses.

At this point Sirius let out an excited whoop.

McGonagall retaliated by saying, 'and there are to be no pigs involved, that means you Mr. Black,' she smirked.

'Are you calling me a pig or telling me that I can't use one for the project?'

'Take you pick,' she laughed, 'the project is to include a transfiguration that is useful, and making pigs fly is not useful. An example of this would be to give hands to an instrument, or give a person gills with which to breathe under water. There are certainly charms that can cause instruments to play, create a bubble of air around you, but to truly perfect the art of partial transfiguration is something that is highly difficult, and may help you in more ways than you think. Isn't that right Mr. Black.'

Sirius blushed slightly before trying, and failing, to laugh the whole pig situation off.

Lily smiled to herself, happy that she would have a competent, reliable partner for two of her major projects and realised that the term would probably go a lot more smoothly than she thought.

* * *

**Well, what is happening now, to be honest I'm not so sure, haha,**

**A huge thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter and all those previous, it makes my day to see those emails.**

**I am very open to constructive criticism as well as the standard review, even flames are appreciated if they serve a purpose other than to make people feel bad, so please let me know what you think or would like to see happen.**

**Also: If anyone would like to Beta this story or receive tidbits as I write them to help smooth the story out or suggested ideas, let me know and I'll see what I can do, having someone to bounce ideas off will help me with keeping the updates coming more quickly as I'll be motivated to write more :)**


	11. A Magical Day Pt 3

**Hello, I know it's been nearly six months since I updated but here it is. I tried three times to write this and the first two it deleted on me due to not using for sixty days. This is my longest chapter so far which I think is very exciting. I really hope that everyone who reads it will leave me a review with something constructive inside. It's really, really helpful and makes me happy. Anyway read on.**

James couldn't help but feel slightly chuffed as he overheard a conversation going on between some Ravenclaw girls outside the Transfiguration classroom.

'You're so lucky Lauren,' one of them sighed, 'you get James Potter as a partner for the whole term, he's single at the moment too, and that's not a chance that comes along every day.'

Lauren smiled, blushing slightly and twirling a piece of hair around her finger in a way that made the light bounce off it, though why that interested James so much he couldn't say. Her hair was certainly very pretty but it was certainly not as vibrant or interesting as Lily's. But the fact that Lauren seemed to be getting a little shy at her friends' playful teasing was doing something weird to his thought process. It seemed bizarre to think that someone so pretty and seemingly intelligent was actually interested in him, not yelling at him. He had dated pretty girls, he had also dated smart girls, and sometimes he had dated girls with amazing, vibrant personalities. On some rare occasion two of those attributes would overlap, resulting in a girl who was quite special, but for all three to overlap was something else all together.

In Lily he saw all three of these things; she was beautiful, funny, intelligent, and had a bubbly, happy personality. Unfortunately, however, she also had the tendency to yell at him whenever he tried to enjoy himself with a (mostly) harmless prank. But the idea of someone who could potentially be like Lily but without the... Well, difficult parts would be too good to be true.

His thoughts snapped back to the present when Professor McGonagall appeared at the classroom door to allow them inside. Sirius quite thoughtfully sent a tripping jinx at Peter so that James had a chance to slip inside undetected. When he arrived in the classroom he noticed the McGonagall had taken his idea a step further than Flitwick and had seated them with the same partners that had been announced in Charms. It seemed that he would be spending rather a lot of time with Lauren Belle before the end of the year. It would be a good opportunity to get to know her better and also be a lot safer than having Lily as a partner if the rest of the day did not turn out as he had planned.

At the front of the class McGonagall was explaining their project for the rest of term: to perform a partial transfiguration to give something properties or abilities that it could not normally posses.

At this point Sirius let out an excited whoop.

McGonagall retaliated by saying, 'and there are to be no pigs involved, that means you Mr. Black,' she smirked.

James smiled to himself, knowing that Sirius was referring, not to the pigs, but the fact that as an animagus, this project would be incredibly easy for him and that he could keep to his usual tactic of waiting until the night before to start work.

'Are you calling me a pig or telling me that I can't use one for the project?' asked Sirius with a grin.

'Take your pick,' she laughed, 'the project is to include a transfiguration that is useful, and making pigs fly is not useful. An example of this would be to give hands to an instrument, or give a person gills with which to breathe under water. There are certainly charms that can cause instruments to play, create a bubble of air around you, but to truly perfect the art of partial transfiguration is something that is highly difficult, and may help you in more ways than you think. Isn't that right Mr. Black.'

Sirius blushed slightly before trying, and failing, to laugh the whole pig situation off.

After McGonagall finished her explanation they broke off into their pairs to begin forming ideas about the project. As James was supposedly not there, he got to watch while Lauren studiously began to jot down ideas about what type of transfigurations they could perform. The list that she was generating showed a good amount of flair and creativity, certainly enough to see them get a decent grade. But James had already decided that both their Charms and Transfiguration projects were going to have to be masterpieces to show Lily that he was indeed able to devote time to his studies. Unfortunately that did mean that he would have to spend a fair amount of time closeted in the library, but what he had seen of Lauren so far gave him the idea that it wouldn't be too bad at all.

The first thing that Lauren had written on the list was not in fact a new idea, but one that had been tried by the Ancient Greeks; giving wings to a horse. When it had been tried originally it had probably seemed like a good idea, but what the witches and wizards of the time hadn't realised was that horses didn't necessarily enjoy being ridden and that by giving them wings, all that was achieved was allowing them a very easy way of disappearing whenever they wanted to. The fact that they had existed at all wasn't widely known among the wizarding world, though surprisingly, some of the stories had filtered the muggle world through tales such as 'The Labours of Heracles'.

James smiled as he thought that the project might not be as easy as he had first assumed. The spellwork involved would probably be a breeze after learning to become an animagus but thinking of an idea that was complex without being so for the sake of it, and grand without being ostentatious, now that was going to be the hard part.

Turning his attention back to Lauren's list of possible projects, he noticed that she had stopped writing ideas and was now idly doodling on the side of the piece of parchment. Her current picture appeared to be a small heart shape with something written inside it. He was not close enough to make out the letters but even with his limited knowledge of the female brain, he knew that Lauren must have a crush on someone.

From the way that she had acted outside the classroom with her friends, James could only hope that those were not his initials in the heart. He hadn't even met the girl properly yet, and regardless, he was putting a lot of effort into letting Lily know that he wasn't really the arrogant prat she thought he was. If he didn't take control of this situation early, it could turn out to be a very long and uncomfortable term.

This train of thought carried James through the rest of the lesson. He looked at the old grandfather clock in the corner and saw that there were only five minutes to go, which meant that he needed to go and get the next part of the day ready.

He moved carefully and quietly to where Sirius was sitting at the back of the classroom and tapped him on the shoulder. Sirius made no indication that he had felt anything but after a moment he made a show of getting to his feet and walking over to open the door.

'And where do you think you're off to Mr. Black?' Asked Professor McGonagall.

'Just a quick bathroom break,' Sirius supplied with a smile.

James used the opportunity to slip outside and continue along with the plan, chuckling quietly as he heard McGonagall say that he should consider a walking urinal for his project so that he didn't feel the need to skive off class early anymore. The door closed and James walked down the corridor humming contentedly to himself, feeling as though things were finally beginning to look up.

-OOoOoOoOo-

Lily smiled to herself as Sirius went back and resumed his seat, though she wasn't sure why he looked so pleased with himself when all he had done was miss out on heading off early. She looked over her list one last time before the class was likely to end and turned to Remus.

'I think that we may be best off trying to do similar work with both of our projects so that we only need to plan things out once,' she suggested.

'Great idea Lily, that also saves us a lot of time just thinking two different things up,' Remus replied, 'what do you think we should do?'

'I'm not sure just yet, I mean, we have a lot of time to sort it out. Shall we organise a time to go to the library and make more definite plans?' She asked, not fully focused on the project as her mind was following the trail of roses leading out the door.

'That sounds great, shall we say Friday after dinner?'

'Sounds good, I'll see you then.'

She accepted his response then made to leave the room with everyone else, eager despite herself to see what awaited her next on this strangely magical day. She followed the roses a little way, thinking they would lead her back to the library but was surprised when they made to turn down the stairs.

As if anticipating her expectation there was a note at the junction, this time sitting on a few books. She picked up the note and read it over.

_Lily,_

_I know you were probably planning to go to the Library and start studying for our projects but the winter chills finally disappearing and it looks lovely out by the lake today. I hope you aren't opposed to doing your study outside instead._

_In the hope that you were okay with this I picked up a couple of books that I thought you may find of assistance when deciding what to do._

_James_

Lily looked at the two books that he had left for her and was quite surprised to see that they were both collections of muggle fairy tales, some of which she had been told as a child. She wasn't sure how this was supposed to help her study but on a whim, she decided that she wouldn't mind sitting out by the lake and relaxing with some children's stories for a while before her next class.

The roses went down a route that was familiar to for some of the way, but as she neared the Great Hall they diverted down a side passage that looked as though it lead to the dungeons. Curious and slightly worried, she peered down the passageway. It was well lit and didn't seem too ominous so she walked cautiously through a series of twists and turns until she found herself at a picture of a fruit bowl.

There was a not stuck on the frame which simply said

_Tickle the pear._

She thought it was a rather odd request but nonetheless, she reached out tentatively and tickled the fruit in question.

Oddly enough, the pear giggled before changing into a door handle. Turning it slowly and allowing the picture to swing open, she looked inside. There was noise, a lot of it, but it appeared ordered rather than chaotic. There was some singing that sounded like a working song, and lots of chatter. The room resembled the Great Hall which she now realised she was directly below. Everything from the size and shape to the placement of the tables was identical. And running through it all were more house elves than she had ever seen.

As she entered and closed the door behind her, one of the house elves saw her and came running over.

'You is Miss Evans?' the creature asked her.

'Yes, I am, and what is your name?'

'Name? Miss Evans wants to know this one's name? Oh, she is a special as Potsy said she was! This one's name is Bidgey'

'Potsy?' she said, half to herself. By this point Bidgey had taken her by the hand and led her over to one of the tables. On it was a basket which another elf took up and pressed into her hands.

'Why?-'

The house elf just pointed behind her and she saw that there was now another trail of roses leading back out the door.

She went to look inside the basket but saw a note on the lid saying

_Not just yet_

So she left it alone and went back the way she had come.

When she was outside the castle she was delighted to see that the roses were leading to her favourite spot beneath a willow tree. The same spot where James had been thrown in the lake by his friends such a short time ago. Now that she thought about it, that had probably been their way of getting him to come around to the idea of trying to make things right between him and herself, though at this point, she was still unsure about whether she was okay with that.

When she reached the tree, she sat down beneath it and looked once more at the basket. The note on it had changed and now read:

_Okay, open it_

And so she did. Inside was a picnic blanket, a flask of strawberry milk and a selection of biscuits and muffins. How James had known that those were her favourites was a mystery but she was happy to have them all the same. She took a bite of a blueberry muffin before opening one of the books to a page at random. She flicked to the start of that story and began to read.

It was a story she was familiar with, set in Greek Mythology, it told of the legendary hero Hercules, or Heracles, in their tongue. The bit that caught her interest was one that she hadn't paid any attention to when she had previously read it. The story told of Hermes, the messenger of the Gods. He wore a pair of winged boots so as to move around quickly. She thought she saw where James was going with this now and opened the other book to double check.

The story that she opened to was called 'Jack and the Beanstalk', and once again, it was something different that she noticed about it. This story had poultry that could lay solid golden eggs. She was certain now that James was encouraging her to look at the muggle world for inspiration for her work. It was a brilliant idea really, without magic; muggles had been trying to think of ways to improve on existing designs for centuries so it made perfect sense to look to them for a place to start. Feeling that she had accomplished more in that short space of time than she was likely to in a few hours of study, she allowed herself to relax and finish her picnic while immersing herself in the stories of her childhood.

-oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo-

James looked out over the lake feeling just a little smug. He had seen it when Lily saw the idea of using muggle ideas as inspiration for her project and was proud that he had thought of it first. It seemed that sometimes you couldn't see things that were too close to you. As she finished the last of her food, he began moving the roses into place to form a trail that would take her to their Muggle Studies class.

On this leg of the journey through the day, he began changing the colours of the roses, slowly at first; a white or yellow rose showing up every so often, but transforming over time to include myriad colours and shapes.

He left a note along the way, hinting at what he was hoping to accomplish with this day, but not giving enough to let her guess. That was what he hoped in any case.

Upon arriving at the Muggle Studies classroom, James saw that no one else was around so he slipped inside. The other Marauders' efforts to let him in and out had been heroic so far but they would begin to become suspicious if they did it in all three classes.

When he looked around himself it was hard not to notice that Professor Smith had gone a little overboard with the 'Change Day' theme. Not only had he sat them in the same pairs as their previous two lessons, he had also organised them with only muggle paraphernalia. There were books of thin parchment and odd looking sticks beside them with black lines running down the centre.

James took his seat and waited patiently for the others to arrive, passing the time by trying to figure out what some of the objects were.

-oOoOoOoOo-

As Lily stood she looked behind her and saw that the trail of roses had reappeared, heading back toward the castle and then presumably to her Muggle Studies class. Professor Smith, who taught the class, was a muggle born himself and she enjoyed the class immensely as it gave her a link back to her childhood and what her life would have been like had she not been born a witch.

She continued that train of thought as she followed the roses. She could scarcely imagine a life without Hogwarts or the ability to magically do nearly anything she wanted, she could even fly on a broomstick like a wicked witch from the fairy tales that her mother had told her when she was young. Not that she had any interest in flying after her first attempt ended abruptly when she fell of the broom before rising two feet from the ground, to the obvious pleasure of Potter and his friends. Or was it James now? She was finding it very difficult to decide what she thought of him.

After she entered the Entrance Hall the path of roses moved over to the giant hourglasses that showed a running total of the points that each house had accrued. She noticed that the Gryffindor total had risen substantially since she had last looked at it.

It was not surprising when she saw a note stuck to the glass. She opened it and read the contents quickly, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

_Lily,_

_I just thought I'd call your attention to the fact that we are currently tied for second place to win the House Cup!_

_The reason that I bring this up is that normally we are running dead last and it has been mostly the fault of my friends and I._

_The fact that we are doing so well should hopefully show you that we are doing well, either that or we are being more sneaky, which is hard when Sirius insists on doing his own theme music all the time.._

_Anyway, I'm rambling. I hope that you enjoyed your picnic and that it gave you some ideas for your projects, just make sure you don't steal mine, though I can't tell you what it is._

_Anyway, rambling again. The other thing that you may have noticed is that the roses have started changing colour. I want you to know that it is a very significant part of today._

_I hope you are finding today as magical as I am,_

_James._

She couldn't help but laugh a little at James' antics. She realised that she had once again thought 'James' rather than 'Potter' but she had decided that she didn't mind it. It had only been a month since term started but he had made a lot of progress in that short period of time, so she felt like she owed it to him. After all, who really wanted to be called by their last name?

The trail of roses stretched out in front of her and Lily noticed that there were indeed variations in the colour every now and then. As she got closer to the Muggle Studies classroom, there was not set colour at all and the flowers were showing up in every hue and shade she had ever seen, plus a few she hadn't. She knew that the roses had to have been enchanted to take on those colours but the result was breathtaking.

As usual she was the first to arrive at the classroom but was soon joined by the other students.

Sirius and Monica showed up hand in hand, making puppy dog faces at each other and obviously enjoying their relationship. She thought it a bit odd that Monica had changed her mind so quickly, but then again, Lily had been focussing more on her life than her best friends recently and so she had limited information and how things had progressed.

Remus and Peter were not far behind the happy couple, they were talking heatedly between themselves, whispering loudly but too quickly for her to make out.

'I don't care,' Peter said, 'It's grossing me out so I'm going to do it!'

Remus sighed and rolled his eyes before walking up to Lily.

'This should be... Well, interesting,' he said.

Before she could ask what he meant, Sirius and Monica both made startled worrying sounds. Looking over at them, Lily saw that they were locked in a tight embrace that she was sure Monica could not have agreed to in public. But even as she thought it, she realised that they were indeed _locked_ in their embrace.

She turned to Remus and demanded, 'Why did you let him do it?'

'What was I supposed to do to stop him?' Remus sighed.

Lily looked around furiously for Peter but he was nowhere to be seen. Others had arrived at the classroom and Sirius and Monica were making quite the spectacle.

She walked over to where they were standing and tried a counterspell to end the jinx Peter had cast but to no avail. It seemed he was cleverer than she knew as he had put relatively complex locks on the spell. That meant that the only option available was for the couple to make their way down to the hospital wing and for the new nurse Madam Pomfrey fix them.

Feeling that something wasn't quite right, she looked back at the two of them. It seemed that the part that felt wrong was that there were no longer worried sounds coming from the pair, no that wasn't quite right, there were sound, they just didn't sound too worried. Apparently since they were stuck that way they had decided to make the most of it.

She shook her head and smiled. Professor Smith poked his head out of the door to see what the commotion was. On sighting the joined pair his mouth dropped open and he looked to be about to tell them off.

'Please Professor,' she said to get his attention, 'they're stuck like that, someone jinxed them.'

'Ah,' he said with a knowing smile, 'I know of such a spell, and I also know of more than one couple who faked getting hit by it for an excuse to find a nice cosy broom cupboard. Well, we shall soon know which it is.'

He muttered a spell and Sirius and Monica pulled apart, though from the look of them they had thought about continuing anyway.

'Sorry Professor,' Monica said, cheeks bright red with embarrassment.

'Hell I'm not!' Sirius said emphatically, 'that was the best damn kiss I've ever had, remind me to thank Wormtail will you Moony?'

Lily frowned at hearing the odd names again, determined to discover what they meant. She had known for a long time that Remus was a werewolf so 'Moony' made sense. But why would the others have names?

She followed her classmates inside and was so wrapped up in thought that she managed to sit down without taking in her surroundings. When she finally did a grin formed on her face. Sitting on the desk in front of her was an exercise book and a pen, items that she had not seen since coming to Hogwarts.

Most of the students seemed baffled by their new writing tools. Sirius managed to snap his pen while trying to discover what it was. His robes and desk were splattered with ink and everybody in the room laughed, each seemingly glad that they were not the one to make the mistake.

'Okay class,' Professor Smith began, 'I am sure that by now you are familiar with your new seating arrangement. The class is also going to involve a team project. In this class, however, you will not need a practical part for the project; we are merely going to be looking at some of what muggles call 'Fairy Tales'. These are stories that muggle parents tell their children in the assumption that the stories are make-believe. We know of course that everything that happened was real and that sometimes there are just too many memories to erase. When faced with a situation like this, the magical community have let the story stay and be told, it generally get out of proportion and people who didn't see it firsthand tend not to believe those who do. This way our secret remains safe by being out in the open. Each pair is going to be assigned a muggle fairy tale or myth to study and write a report on the contents of the story, which aspects are actually magical and what we can learn from the way the situation was handled, or more specifically, why it was handled that way.'

Most of the class groaned at the prospect of another essay with so little time left in the school year. Lily was actually thrilled as this project was going to be a huge help with her other two. She was glad that James had helped her see the easy way to do well in the two, now all three projects.

The rest of the lesson involved the handing out of stories and reading them through. She and Remus received 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' which made her very happy as it had always been a favourite of hers. She started explaining to story to Remus and explained the magical parts. It seemed like no time at all before class was over and it was time for dinner. Her magical day was nearing its end.

-oOoOoOoOo-

James looked at the piece of paper Lauren was holding happily. Written on it in a neat hand was 'The Labours of Hercules'. She seemed rather confused and not too happy about the large book in front of her. She opened it and began reading. James, who was already familiar with the story, just sat back and relaxed until the lesson was over.

He was the first one out the door, a trail of roses falling into place behind him.

As he went down the stairs, he began to add other varieties of flower to the mix. First he added just one colour as he had done with the roses but gradually the trail turned into a veritable field of wild flowers.

Flowers of every colour and variety were forming a soft carpet on the floor by the time he reached the Great Hall. He picked up some food once inside and left a note for Lily in her usual spot where the flowers conveniently ended. He stood in the Entrance Hall to wait while the other students all went in to eat.

He caught a glimpse of bright red hair and a smiling face in the crowd and allowed himself a glimmer of hope; it seemed that everything was going according to plan.

Once most of the students were safely out of the way, James began walking back up the stairs. This time he left a note at the foot of every set of stairs that he ascended. The flowers that fell in to place behind him began forming more of a pattern in their choice of colour and shape, as though they were part of one cohesive design.

His path led him all the way to the seventh floor where he wrote another note before pacing before a large wall, thinking of the perfect place for him to finish the magical day. On his third pass, an ornately carved door appeared and he smiled and slipped inside.

The room was perfect. It had become a rooftop garden with beautiful views over the grounds and the lake. There was a fountain that fed a small stream, its sound adding an ambience to the scene. Flowers bloomed in perfect beds and many varieties of tree loomed over him. All he had to do now was wait.

-oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo-

It wasn't until she was eating dinner in the Great Hall that Lily began to stress. The day had been splendid so far but she was concerned that she was being buttered up for whatever conversation James wanted to have with her. He'd basically said that he was through proclaiming his undying love for her and that he would not embarrass her with indecent proposals any more but she couldn't guess what he wanted to talk about.

She sighed and pushed the food around her plate, too nervous to eat.

'Are you okay Lil?' Monica asked sweetly, turning away from Sirius to talk to her.

'She's right Lily, you don't look too good,' Remus added.

'I, um, I think I'll just go lay down for a while,' she said as she stood to leave, though dinner was not even half way through.

'Would you like me to some with you?' Monica asked.

'It's okay, I expect you'll find me asleep when you get back. What a long day it's been!'

'You're right about that Lily, though I will say, I wish a guy cared enough about me to go to that much effort just to ask me out.' She looked teasingly at Sirius, which was a piece of good fortune as at the suggestion that James might ask her out, Lily began to worry.

She stammered a hasty goodbye then rushed from the Great Hall. At the foot of the Grand Staircase in the Entrance Hall she saw a note and nearly went past it for fear of what it might say. Knowing that as she had gone along with the day up to this point, she really should see it out. Reaching down reluctantly, she picked up the note and read it.

_Lily,_

_I'm guessing that by now you're either very excited or very worried about how this day will end._

_Don't deny it! We both know that you worry about everything._

_I just wanted to let you know something that will hopefully put to rest some of your worries._

_I am not planning to ask you to be my girlfriend tonight and I am not going to proclaim my undying love for you. The days where those kinds of sentiments were frivolously thrown around are gone; if I ever do say them to you it will be a long time from now._

_I hope that helps some,_

_James._

Lily smiled to herself before following the flowers up the stairs. By this point they had begun to resemble a field of wild flowers. She wondered what the change indicated, James had said it was important, after all.

It truly was uncanny that James was able to take her fears and remove them before her usual worrying cycle had a chance to begin. He seemed to know just the right thing to say and always at the right time, it certainly was a big turnaround from the James who was only able to say the worst possible thing in any given situation.

The next note along the trail was at the foot of the staircase to the second floor, it read.

_Lily,_

_I thought a lot about what to put into these notes and where to leave them along the day, the more that I wrote, the more I realised that it was easier to put down the first thing that came to my mind rather that frustrate myself by trying to think of the perfect wording. So here goes._

_I really hope that you've enjoyed the day so far. I know that we haven't been on the best of terms lately, well ever, but I would appreciate it if you finished this evening with an open mind. I hope that you are going to like the finale._

_James._

This note, unlike the others she had received that day, seemed a little all over the place, as though James couldn't figure out what he was trying to say. Lily wasn't sure what to make of that so she folded the parchment, put it into her bag and continued. Before long, the path appeared to lead into a broom cupboard. She had serious reservations about stepping into a broom cupboard that might hold James Potter. She had nearly made up her mind when she saw that there was a note sticking out between the door and the wall. She opened it and read with relief.

_Relax! I'm not in there. This is just a secret passage. Push on the top right shelf along the back wall, it's far quicker that the stairs._

Curious, she went inside and did as James had instructed. The whole wall slid back under her touch to reveal a well lit, stone passage way. She thought it rather improper to skulk around through secret passages but she had to admit that she was eager to see what happened. She walked along without incident until she reached the point where there was a left hand turn and a set of stairs that stretched on further than she could see.

As soon as she placed her foot on the first stair she knew something was wrong. No matter how hard she tried she could not seem to lift her foot again. She wondered why James would put her through this after being so nice to her all day. She put her other foot on the stair above to try and get some leverage but as soon as it was firmly in place, the whole stair started to move. It was like a muggle escalator, but before long, it was moving far more quickly than seemed safe. Lily clung tightly to the hand rail until the movement finally stopped.

When she moved off the stairs she saw the back of a tapestry. She pushed it aside and stepped out, seeing immediately that she was on the seventh floor. She now understood how James and his friends got around so quickly.

The trail ended abruptly in front of a blank wall. She reached down to pick up the final note.

_Lily Marie Evans,_

_What I need you to do for me now is pace back and forth in front of this wall think very strongly that you need to find me. I know it sounds silly, but it will make sense once you have done it._

_James Orion Potter._

Lily frowned at the note but followed its instructions. She tried very hard to think that she wanted to find James, though it was a difficult thought to keep in place

On her third turn something incredible began to happen. The wall was beginning to turn into an ornate door. Within moments she was standing before a door that had been a wall mere moments before. Tentatively, she turned the handle and walked inside.

-oOoOoOoOoOoOoOo-

James looked up as he heard the door open. He smiled as he took in the look of wonder on Lily's face; the Room had outdone itself this time. She walked around the garden, not having noticed him yet. She inhaled deeply of some flowers and reached out to touch the trunks of what appeared to be ancient trees. The way that she moved through the area so gracefully made her seem like a wood faerie, in short, she was breathtaking.

He rose slowly from the bench that he had been sitting on and walked over to her.

She seemed aware of his presence as he approached but continued to take in the surroundings.

'It's beautiful,' she said simply, 'what is this place?'

'It's called the Room of Requirement, it can take the form of what you need, I, for example, asked for a place where you would be comfortable and happy. A place that was grand and beautiful. This is what it chose.'

'Amazing, I never knew it existed,' she turned to him, mock anger showing on her face, 'and I did not need to discover that staircase James Orion Potter! Or should I call you Potsy?'

He laughed. 'We have a lot to talk about Lily. Will you come sit with me? I had a feeling you mightn't have eaten so I brought a picnic.'

'Did you bring strawberry milk?'

'Of course.'

'Then you have a deal. Let's talk.'

They walked over to the prepared picnic rug and sat down, the ground soft underneath them.

James cleared his throat, 'where to begin.'

**I feel bad for leaving it like that but if I had continued the chapter would have been very long and I'm not sure what will happen afterward. Speaking of which if anyone has any ideas on what they would like to see please let me know!**


	12. A New Beginning

**Wow, this is two updates in under a month, I'm a little shocked myself. Now there are probably errors in both spelling any grammar but I've missed them. I am still in need of someone to read this stuff over so let me know if you're interested. As always, please do review; there's little that's more depressing than seeing your story get 300+ hits when you post a new chapter and getting 1 or 2 reviews. To those that do review, I can't express how much I appreciate it.**

**CHAPTER 12: A NEW BEGINNING**

-Lily-

'Where to begin?' James asked after clearing his throat. Lily wasn't sure whether the question was directed at her so she remained silent.

The moment stretched out and she felt as though it may be best to say something before it got too uncomfortable. As she began to open her mouth, an awkward sentence just beginning to form in her brain, James saved her the trouble by letting out a sigh.

'First of all Lily,' he began, 'I just want to thank you for seeing this through. When I was putting this idea together my biggest worry was that you weren't going to give it a chance and so you have my gratitude.'

Lily nodded, unsure of where this was going.

'I guess the reason for us being here now, in this room, began six years ago when we first met. I came into the school knowing what to expect, feeling as though I would fit right in, confident that I would be made a Gryffindor. You probably came here knowing very little about the magical world in general, let alone Hogwarts, were sorted into a house without knowing the meaning or tradition behind it.'

Lily nodded.

'On the train ride here I had seen you sticking up for Sirius, who was being bullied for not agreeing with his family's Pureblood fanaticism by some of our Slytherin friends, though the sorting hadn't even happened. I thought what they were saying was a load of rubbish and tried to help out by telling them so but you wanted none of it. I still remember what you said-'

'I don't know who you are but I am quite fine telling these people to leave this boy alone by myself'

'You stuck your tongue out at me in what I must say was a very mature manner and continued to berate them. Sirius came along with me afterward and we soon became fast friends and thought of a plan to show you that I too could handle myself. I made the mistake of wanting to show off for my new friend so at the feast I "inadvertently",' he paused to make inverted commas with both hands, accentuating the word as he spoke it, causing Lily to have to stifle a giggle as she thought she knew what he was confessing, 'spilt some chocolate milk on your robes as we ate, that was the beginning of the pranks and the feud that was to develop between us. It also happened to be the day that I learnt that strawberry milk was your favourite,' James smiled.

Lily found herself smiling too at the memory, 'I told you that if you had to go and spill milk on me you could at least have made it strawberry because I couldn't stand chocolate milk and strawberry was obviously the best.'

'Which I disagreed with, and ended up covered in strawberry milk for my troubles.' James let out a small laugh.

'The point of that anecdote is that from the very first, we got off on the wrong foot. You saw me, though this opinion probably didn't develop for a while, but you saw me as someone who tried so hard to be chivalrous that it bordered on chauvinistic-'

Lily scoffed at this thinking that chivalrous was too kind a word. James appeared to notice what she was referring to as he quickly made an amendment.

'Okay so perhaps you saw me as very chauvinistic. The point is that that was the first impression that I gave you and as the damage had already been done, I didn't see the need to correct it. It wasn't until third year when I began to, well, pay attention to females that I realised my mistake.'

James stopped for a moment and ran his hands through his hair in exactly the manner that annoyed Lily so, but sitting this close to him and looking at his facial expression as well as the action, she noticed that in this instance it seemed to be a nervous habit. It was as though he was just giving himself something to do with his hands while he got his thoughts in order. At the point, James looked up at her again and began to speak once more. She couldn't help but notice an intensity in his eyes that she hadn't seen before, but she now had to listen and couldn't continue to think.

'You had been very pretty over the first two years, everyone knew that, but it was more of an adorable niece kind of pretty. In third yea I, and a few others began to notice that you were actually rather, nay, uncannily beautiful. At this point the only attention we spared each other was through pranks and childish arguments. I had become infatuated with you and decided that I wanted more of your attention so I did what had been working so far; I pulled more pranks, annoyed you more and basically did anything I could to get you to notice me. Once again, I didn't realise my mistake until it was far too late and once I had made it, it seemed pointless to go back.'

Lily felt very thoughtful by this point and was beginning to see where James was headed.

'By fifth year I had been on the Quidditch team for two years already which gave a boost to my physical stature thanks to the training and consequently, to my ego. I had girls wanting to date me because I was from a good family, on the Gryffindor Quidditch Team as one of the youngest Seekers in a long time and The training and helped fill me out whereas, to be honest, I had previously been rather skinny.'

This last statement caused Lily to laugh aloud as she remembered James Potter at eleven; relatively tall for his age, skinny and with glasses that made his eyes look a little larger than they truly were, it had been rather comical. She remembered thinking that he looked something akin to a Praying Mantis.

'So there I was, just last year, thinking that I should be able to get any girl I wanted, but the only girl I wanted was you. By that point I had,'

James faltered at this point, looking as though he was bracing himself for something.

'I had, discouraged any interested parties from courting you and the male population of the school knew that to try was to face endless pranking from the Marauders,'

Lily raised her eyebrows at this. She had noticed that while most other girls were dating, she had been unable to find any boys that seemed interested in her. She had always put it down to her looks or her temper but she'd always had school work to occupy herself with so she hadn't thought about it much until now. It certainly did explain a lot. She was about to tell James, no, Potter what she thought of him meddling with her life when he did something rather unexpected. He placed a finger on her lips.

She was too shocked to respond and James took the opportunity to continue.

'I know that it was not the right way to go about things but at the time it seemed logical. Anyway, after all this came the incident after the O.W.L exams last year which was when I finally started thinking about my actions. You see, the persona that I presented to the school was not really how I wanted to be. I underwent a change once I got here which came from feeling the need to impress everyone and live up to my family name. It wasn't until Christmas break that I realised that I needed to be who I truly was, not the person that I thought everyone wanted me to be.'

Lily nodded approvingly and allowed him to continue, holding back her anger at the manipulation of her love life.

'I sent you a note for Christmas rather than my customary present, and once I sent it, even though your reply was not what I hoped, I felt that it was probably the best Christmas gift I had ever given you.'

He was right about that much, jewellery was really only flattering if you were in a relationship, or at least that was what Lily assumed, she didn't exactly have any experience as a base for that theory.

'Once we got back to Hogwarts I thought things were going splendidly until you played that practical joke on me-'

Lily cringed.

'-at which point I wondered whether everyone really did like the fake me better, true enough, you only ever yelled at me but at least you hadn't hurt my feelings. The only other change that had occurred had been that the girls weren't as interested in me anymore, barring Melanie, of course. So I tried to give up. This worked for around two weeks before my friends rather unceremoniously dumped be in the lake to splash me out of my stupidity. We came up with the idea for this 'Change Day' as a way to show that change is real and can happen in numerous ways, frequently good ways.'

James paused again to let all of what he had said sink in.

'It wasn't until today that I truly realised what it is that I'm feeling. During lessons today I was musing about the fact that it was very rare to come across a girl who was beautiful, intelligent and had a great personality. My partner for the term, Lauren Belle, seems to envelop all of these things, but she also appears to have a crush on me. We may have spoken very occasionally in the last six years but only when it was related to class work. Today I think I began to understand how you feel. There is someone who seems to be infatuated with me but they don't really know anything about me. She certainly seems like a nice enough person but that isn't something that you can base a relationship on. The only ones who really do know me are Sirius, Pete and Remus.'

Lily was curious as to why he was mentioning Lauren. She was now certain that he wasn't going to proposition her as mentioning another attractive female would have rendered that request, however elegant, moot.

'The reason for today Lily, the reason that I'm doing all this, is not to gain affection or respect from anyone but myself. I want to drop the walls that I've built to hide myself and be the person that I always have been underneath. I want everyone to know that James Potter is not just a class clown, and I wanted you who has been at the receiving end of so much of my deception, to be the first to know.'

'You probably wondered why I signed one of the notes with my full name. The reason for that is that I don't feel that we have every properly met. Lily, my name is James Orion Potter; I enjoy playing Quidditch, but equally enjoy spending and evening curled up by the fire with a book and a cup of tea. I enjoy pulling pranks, but my favourites are the ones that create mildly funny, harmless situations, humorous, not hurtful. I am reputed to have run out of space on my bedpost for notches, but in truth, there are none.'

Lily almost stopped listening at this. She could have sworn that she just hear James Potter claim that he was a virgin! She recalled Monica saying that Sirius claimed the same thing, even that he had never been kissed. If that was true then it did make some sense that James could be the same.

'And one other fact for now,' James continued with a broad smile, 'strawberry is my favourite flavour too.'

Lily couldn't help but laugh along with James at that comment. She was surprised by how genuine his laugh sounded, it wasn't the usual sneering sound that escaped him when he was tormenting someone, but a deep belly laugh that seemed to resonate slightly.

As their laughter subsided, James continued in a serious tone, 'Lily, I want to become the person that I always wanted to be. I want to explain everything to you in time. I'm not asking you to forgive and forget what I've done, I know that some of it has been very distressing. I only ask that you consider letting me try to become your friend.'

There was no way at all that Lily could say no to a request like that, 'Of course, James.'

He smiled at that, before launching into a story about his childhood.

The evening passed quickly as they regaled each other with tales from their years before school. Lily was intrigued by James' seemingly pointless stories. They not only told her more about who had had been before he got here, but it was also a very interesting glimpse of like as a child in the wizarding world. For his part, James seemed equally fascinated by her stories of the muggle world.

'Really?' James asked at one point, 'you just put stuff in the fidge-rater and it just stays cold, all on it's own? Merlin's Beard, That's amazing! How have wizards and witches lived without this stuff. How long did you say muggles have had elec-city for?

'Refrigerator,' Lily laughed, 'and it's electricity. It's been known of for hundreds of years but a lot of the modern appliances were only invented recently.'

'Wow,' he replied, 'that would make life so much more interesting. Our house elf just puts a cooling charm on things to keep them cold. I bet it would be fun to open a-' he slowed down here and screwed up his face, 'refrigerator and get stuff out.'

Lily laughed openly at this. She could just imagine James or Sirius standing in front of a fridge opening and closing the door. In her mind's eye they were trying to discover if the light stayed on when the door closed. This thought led to her laughing so much that teas of mirth began to roll down her cheeks.

James pouted slightly and waited for her to finish laughing. 'What's so funny!' He demanded.

'One day I will show you a fridge and then you will understand,' Lily said between giggles. A thought occurred to her suddenly. 'James, you mentioned earlier today that the flowers were important, I thought about it and I know that it represents some sort of change but I wasn't sure what. Care to enlighten me?'

'Ah, I'm glad you asked actually,' James responded, looking rather pleased with himself, 'I didn't want to be the one to bring it up, but basically, the flowers represented what I thought of you. To begin with there was only the red roses, they symbolised the way that I thought of you for most of the time I've known you. You were a romantic interest, hence roses. You seemed mysterious and I wanted to be with you so that I was with you.'

Lily frowned slightly at this, wondering where the idea was headed.

'Eventually the roses began changing colour, as did my thoughts. I still wanted to be with you but there were new reasons popping up. This shows my thinking since we got back from Christmas break. I began to see that there was more to you that the beauty and intelligence. There was also a kindness that is very rare, a love of nature and a cheeky side to match any Marauder's.'

'Well I wouldn't go _that_ far,' She laughed.

James smiled and continued, 'after I got unceremoniously dumped in the lake, the flowers of my thought pattern change from just including roses and began incorporating other flowers. This represented the fact that I didn't want to get to know you just for a relationship any more. There were still a fair few roses in the mix but now I wanted to learn more about you.'

She smiled as she saw where the trail was ending.

'Finally the flowers were of every variety and colour, this was to symbolise that I feel as though I want to know you on many levels and that there are myriad things that I want to know about you, more things than I can readily imagine. For example, I've always known you were muggle-born but I'd never imagined having a conversation with you about,' he screwed up his face again, in a way that was nearly cute, 'electricity. In short, my perception has changed from a narrow minded, chauvinistic view to an open minded, caring one.'

It took Lily quite a while to decide how to react to this statement. The fact was, she had just been told something very deep and romantic by a man. The Elizabeth Bennet inside her wanted to swoon while the rational part of her brain tried to digest the information.

Eventually she was able to come up with a response, 'there were still roses in the trail,' she observed.

'Yes,' James replied unabashedly, but also with no elaboration.

'One of the notes said that you weren't planning to ask me out tonight,' she continued the train of thought, worried at what she would hear next.

'And I have no intention of doing so, tonight,' he said genuinely, 'There are still roses in the trail because I am still romantically interested in you and it would have been a lie of omission to not include them. That said, my main goal at the moment is to find myself and become happy with that person. If we end up friends through that process then I will consider it an added bonus.'

Lily was very impressed with the maturity James was showing, in fact, they seemed to be getting along much better that she would have thought possible. Their conversation continued for what must have been a lengthy period of time, for when Lily looked at her watch, she noticed that the time was half past eleven.

'Oh dear,' she said, rising abruptly and trying to regain feeling in her mostly numb legs, 'it's already half past eleven, we should have been in bed hours ago.'

'I thought off that too,' James said, 'I took the liberty of bringing a tent and a sleeping bag if you would like to spend the night here. I chose a Wednesday because we have no classes until after lunchtime tomorrow. I'll just head back to the common room and you can stay here if you would rather. It is a pretty magical place.'

Lily nodded and looked around her once more, trying to take in everything about the room, though it appeared to be more of a hidden grove in a forest. When she pulled her attention back to the scene around her she had a smile on her lips. James had set up the tent magically and was standing by her. He held out his hand and she tentatively took it, unsure of what he was doing. She was quite surprised by his firm grip as he shook her hand much like she had seen her father do with businessmen.

'Goodnight Lily,' He said formally.

'Goodnight James.' She whispered in response. James moved off toward the door and Lily moved into the tent he had set up. Though the hour was late, she was certainly not ready to sleep, she had a lot of thinking to do and there was opportunity for a sleep in the next morning. She was unsurprised to find that the tent was larger inside than it had appeared from the outside. She went into the bedroom area and lay down on the bunk, fully intending to think her day through and decide how she felt about all of it. As soon as her head touched the pillow she found herself dreaming of a picnic in a field of wildflowers.

-Sirius-

'So how do you think things are going?' Monica asked the three of them in general.

Sirius looked at the clock before answering, it read eleven o'clock, 'Lily hasn't arrived back in a rage yet so I'm going to say it went well, in fact, I thought they'd be back long before now, maybe it went very well,' he smirked.

Monica laughed at his not so subtle innuendo, 'I don't think so Sirius, James has a lot of ground to cover before Lily will even want to be his friend, let alone anything more than that. Anyway, I don't think I can wait up any longer. I'll just ask her what happened in the morning.'

With that Monica got up from the couch where they had been seated, watching Remus and Peter play chess. She leaned down and kissed him chastely on the lips which caused Sirius to smile. He had only ever kissed one girl and at this point he would be happy to kiss her exclusively for the rest of his life.

'Goodnight Mon,' he whispered.

She smiled and kissed him again, 'goodnight.'

Sirius watched her walk up the stairs and out of sight with a goofy smile on his face. He turned back around to find Remus and Peter doing a mock rendition of the goodnight ritual.

'Oh goodnight Sirius, dahling,' Peter mimicked poorly, sounding more like a middle aged woman than the sweet young lady he was trying to impersonate.

'No don't leave me,' Remus replied with a broken hearted looked on his face, 'I can't possibly last until morning without seeing you're radiance.'

They proceeded to make mushy kissing sounds before bursting into laughter.

'Har har, very mature,' Sirius said in a bemused tone, 'just you wait until you have girlfriends, then you'll be in for it!'

Remus and Peter both seemed a little crestfallen at this statement and went back to their game rather quietly.

Sirius knew that Remus had trouble committing to a relationship due to his "furry little problem". He thought that as soon as he trusted someone enough and told them, they would run away and regard him as a monster. Peter's reason was similar, a fear of rejection. He was definitely not a stand out among the Marauders, while still a very capable wizard; he was overshadowed by the others and as such, often overlooked.

His thoughts drifted to Monica, as they seemed to be doing with relative frequency now. He thought about how they had spoken after he had shown her the flying pig. She'd said that she was not about to go out with him just because of one gesture, no matter how sweet. At first he had been a little crestfallen but she had not closed the door on him so he kept trying. He'd done everything he could think of the show her that he was interested in her, and for the right reasons. He began walking her to classes, talking about anything and everything that came to mind. They discovered that they had a lot of similarities and that even their different interests were still interesting to the other. Sirius was a Beater for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and though Monica was afraid of flying, she loved watching the matches and found the aerobatics sport fascinating. Monica had grown up on a farm and absolutely adored horses, an animal that seemed to have been forgotten by the wizarding world. Sirius had confessed that he had never seen a horse before, and when Monica had showed him a photo of a big black horse named Mr. Darcy he had admitted to being eager to meet him.

Their friendship had progressed quickly and when the first Hogsmeade weekend had been announced for the previous Saturday, Sirius had worked up the courage to ask Monica to go with him. He was surprised at how overjoyed he had been when she had agreed; while always known as a flirt, he had never been on a proper date with someone he really liked before. The date itself was like something out of a dream. He felt nervous the entire time and probably made a fool of himself by trying too hard to say nothing foolish, but Monica had taken it in her stride, giggled politely and his bad jokes and laughed at his good ones.

When he had walked her down to breakfast that morning he pulled her aside to the same place that he'd shown her the flying up every bit of courage he possessed, Sirius had spoken,

_'Monica, I wanted you to know that I'm really grateful that you gave me a chance to get to know you. Not only because it was very kind of you but because I've discovered that you are a lot more than the person I thought you were. I always knew that you were very pretty, beautiful even, but I didn't dare to dream that we had so much in common or that we could be such good friends. The thing is, with this discovery came the realisation that what I felt for you that caused me to ask you out in the first place was more than a whim. I've loved every moment we have spent together and,' he'd paused at this point, trying to frame what he wanted to say, 'and I'd be honoured if you would consent to be my girlfriend.'_

_Monica had looked at him long and hard, after the first ten seconds he was feeling very nervous. After thirty seconds he was nearly ready to run away and was seriously considering doing so when she replied softly, 'Okay.'_

_Sirius had felt as though his world had lit up, a feeling of warmth was flowing through his body and the butterflies in his stomach had changed from nervous to happy. He reached out and slowly pulled her into a hug. After holding her for a few moments and wondering if anything could feel as wonderful as that, he pulled back and looked into her eyes._

_'Monica,' he began his question, 'may I please kiss you?'_

_She nodded, smiling and that was all the invitation he needed. He leant down and very slowly and gently kissed her._

It had been his first kiss and he was very worried about doing something wrong but his fears were put to rest when she wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed softly.

They'd pulled apart and walked into the Great Hall hand in hand before Monica had sat down next to Lily, 'go sit with your friends,' she'd said, 'I need to talk to Lily, you could walk me to class though?'

Sirius had nodded and smiled. The memory of her wanting him to walk her to class made him feel pretty special.

He was brought back to the present by a persistent, sing-song calling of his name.

'Sirius... _Si_rius,'

He looked up to see that James was back, the clock now read eleven-thirty, apparently he'd been day-dreaming for a while.

'Prongs,' he said, 'how'd thing go?'

'Better than I thought,' James replied with a smile.

'Brilliant! Let's hear all about it.'

As James began to tell them about his day Sirius briefly recapped his thoughts about Monica and made a resolution. He had to help the other three find what he had, for no one deserved to miss out on feeling loved.

**So what do we all think of James' confession?**

**I for one firmly believe that If James really was an absolute... Let's say Poopie Head, all along, even changing wouldn't have eradicated Lily's doubts and theis seemed feasible. Please let me know what you think and pass on any suggestions or criticism that you have :)**

**Also, thank you very much to **

**Shine**

**and cat cruz 93**

**who were nice enough to review after I posted the last chapter. It really helps motivate me to write when I know that people actually want to read.**


	13. Shaky First Steps

**Okay so this is disastrously short but I feel terribly about how long it's been since I updated. Major life upheaval is my only excuse.**

**As always, everything you recognise belongs to JK Rowling, I claim the storyline :)**

**Enjoy, and please, please, please review!**

**LJLJLJLJLJLJLJLJLJLJLJ**

-Lily-

Lily awoke early the next morning; her sleeping pattern working even without her alarm. She rubbed her eyes tiredly and looked around her, it took a moment to realise that she was not in the dormitory. When she looked at the interior of the tent, the events of the previous day came flooding back to her in a rush. She sat up in bed and let her thoughts wander, class didn't start for a long time and she had a lot of thinking to do.

The previous day had given her a whole new outlook on James. She had thought that he was an arrogant, bullying, toerag, and he had been, but the fact that it was a mask gave her serious worries. She thought it was brilliant that he wanted to change and become a better person, someone more like who he really was, but the fact that he had wrought such manipulation on such a large scale was a little scary.

Her thoughts drifted to individual elements of the day, the picnic out by the lake, the gradual change in the trail of flowers, the nearly cute way that he had tried to pronounce Muggle words. It was all very sweet and if that was the person that lived inside the enigmatic James Potter then she felt that they might be able to get along, not that she was influenced by how sweet he was, of course, just that he showed a fair amount of intelligence, wit, and creativity... and maybe he was a little sweet...

The problem now lay in the fact that he had been a rather horrid person, not only to her, but the entire school populace for nearly six years. To her it didn't matter how much he may or may not have changed recently, one good act was not enough to erase all of the pain he had caused.

Another worry that plagued her was the idea that if he really had been pretending to be a egotistical prat for so long, he was obviously a good liar; so how could she know whether this 'change' was legitimate? He had tried every other approach to get her to date him and failed, what if this was the only avenue left? What if he did just want her so that he could say he'd finally conquered her? What if the chase was all he knew?

She certainly wasn't thinking about entering a relationship with James. The problem lay in the fact that if she gave him a chance now and he had been lying, she might not know until it was too late. He had already dated most of the girls in the school and had built up a reputation as a womaniser and she certainly didn't want that feeling of betrayal, even just on the level of friendship. There was a reason that she only had one real friend; she was shy by nature and found it very difficult to trust people. After the heartbreak she had felt when her sister Petunia pushed her away, she hadn't felt sure that she could trust anyone. Before the fateful Hogwarts letter, they'd been the best of friends, doing everything together, but because of the fact that she, Lily Evans, was a witch, something out of fairy tales, and Petunia wasn't, the relationship had ended.

Lily felt the defensive walls start to build up around her, constantly warning of potential pain and suffering. She knew that she would be kept safe if she just hid behind them and didn't let anyone else in. She could just continue being cool toward James and he would get the idea that this time, no really was no. But part of her thought back to what her mother had said to her over Christmas Day. After Petunia had stormed out of the room, her mother had started questioning her.

_'Lily,' her mother said in a voice that was disconcerting as it seemed curious, rather than angry or defeated._

_'Yeah Mum?' she responded cautiously._

_'Don't let her ruin your life,' her mother looked very sad as she said the words._

_'What do you mean?'_

_'I think you know what I mean, you never have friends over, you've never had a boyfriend, you spend most of your time in your room. Relationships with friends, family, partners, they can hurt, and sometimes they do. But they _are_ worth the risk. Please don't let this one bad experience, terrible as it is, have such a huge impact on your life. There will be people who will be as good as sisters to you. And there will be someone who you will share your life with, it may even be this James you keep talking about,' her mother smiled at this point, obviously teasing her and hoping to get a reaction._

_'I'm fine Mum, don't worry about me,' Lily replied nonchalantly, wishing it were true, 'anyway, I have a letter to finish, to one of my _friends_. I'll be back down soon.'_

_She left the room knowing full well that her mother was right, but unable to accept it. _

She could see the truth of the words very clearly now. It was painfully obvious that the walls she was erecting for self defence were keeping out good as well as bad. She certainly couldn't get hurt this way, but what if her mother was right? What if the joy you felt by letting people in really could outweigh the pain of being hurt by someone you trusted.

Lily looked at her watch and decided that it was time to head down for a late breakfast. She was still undecided about what to do but she had promised James a chance and she wasn't going to take it back unless he gave her good reason to. For now, at least, she was going to undergo a little change of her own.

Walking out of the Room of Requirement was a sad experience, the beautiful grove was such a magical place that it felt like a different reality, things like school work and classes seemed distant and unimportant. As the door faded seamlessly back into the wall behind her, she brought herself back to the world. Standing not ten feet away from her was the person she had hoped to avoid seeing this soon after their encounter; there were still so many things she had to think through and it looked liked she wasn't going to have the chance to do so before what promised to be an awkward conversation occurred.

She must have made some sort of sound because James looked up suddenly, breaking of his conversation with Sirius. When he saw her, he smiled in what she thought was a shy manner, though she had never seen that look on him before so she wasn't quite sure.

'Hi Lily,' he said casually.

It was all she could do to mutter a soft, 'Hello,' as fear and anticipation gripped her.

'We're just going down to breakfast, did you want to join us?'

There didn't seem to be any way to avoid it but Lily felt to uncomfortable to respond at all.

It seemed like a miracle but James appeared to have somehow picked up on her reservations and quickly changed tack, 'Oh wait,' he said theatrically, 'Sirius, I forgot the Cloak.'

This was a rather confusing statement as he was quite obviously wearing his cloak and he hadn't said '_my __cloak_', but '_the cloak_', as though it deserved capitalisation.

'What are you talking about James? I've got it, remember,' Sirius replied.

'I mean I _forgot_ the _Cloak_,' came James' reply, in what seemed to be a slightly strained voice.

Sirius looked over at her and apparently realised something, 'Oh wait, no I don't have it. Right then, let's go back and get it. See you later Lily!'

They hurried off down the corridor, back toward the common room and Lily silently thanked James for his consideration. This definitely was a side to him that she'd never seen before. He had always taken every opportunity to force his presence on her so going out of his way to give her some space was a huge surprise.

She walked slowly on her way to the Great Hall, dawdling as much as possible to give her brain time to grasp what was happening. For all points and purposes James seemed to be changing himself, or becoming himself, as he had put it. If he followed through with it then he could be a nice person to be around. Their discussion the previous night had shown her a lot of things that she hadn't known about him.

The logical thing to do seemed to wait and see what happened but her brain did not want accept that. She was used to knowing things in advance so that she could plan and prepare. This situation involved emotion and feelings so there was no way of knowing what would happen. The 'wait and see' option was all that would suffice but, truth be told, she was damn curious and wanted to know what the outcome would be now!

The doors to the Great Hall appeared suddenly in front her. They opened easily at her touch and she passed through them without really taking anything in. Her train of thought was not broken until she reached the Gryffindor table and sat down next to Monica.

'Lily, Lily, look!' Monica said, pointing down toward the other end of the table. From the cross look on her face, Lily guessed that Monica had been trying to point whatever it was out for quite some time.

Glancing up, Lily immediately knew that something was out of the ordinary, the silence was nearly deafening, nobody was eating, all were staring gob-smacked at the end of the Gryffindor table where James and Sirius sat with the other 'Marauders', both engrossed in their own novel while they ate. Remus was reading the Daily Prophet and Peter was staring around in what seemed to be an attempt at Sirius' bored, haughty, 'I'm to good to be here' look.

The scene wasn't entirely out of place at breakfast time but the fact that two of the enigmatic 'Marauders' were reading books at all, let alone, Lily looked closer, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights! The shocked silence that was pervading the Hall now made sense.

James glanced her way for a moment and she saw him wink, it seemed that the choice of books had been very deliberate. It wasn't just that they were reading, that was thinking too small. Now it seemed as though they had transformed into deep, emotional beings who read classical novels. The enjoyment they must be getting from the situation made Lily want to laugh, or yell at them, she wasn't quite sure which.

In the end she decided to ignore the spectacle and eat some breakfast. The silence soon dissolved into the standard chatter of breakfast time, though it was obvious that there was only one topic of conversation. Lily was rudely interrupted from her contemplation of the empty plate in front of her by a sharp jab from Monica.

'Lily, can we leave now?' she hissed.

'Uh, sure, why the rush?'

'They're glaring at us?' she whispered

'What? Who?'

'Like, the entire female population of the school.'

'Why would they do that?'

'Because they think that both Sirius _and _James are taken.'

'But James is sing- Oh,' was all Lily could get out as realisation dawned on her, then, 'how dare they! My private life is my own for a start, and besides, we are barely even friends yet,' she exclaimed, perhaps a little too loudly because she looked over and saw James grinning. Apparently he liked the fact that she'd called them friends, even if just barely.

They stood and walked from the hall, Monica giggling at being the envy of the school and Lily fuming at the assumptions people were making.

The day progressed in much the same way as it had begun, there were people staring out the windows all afternoon and James and Sirius flew around in complicated synchronised movements above the Quidditch Pitch and at dinner, they played a relatively harmless prank on everyone in attendance, themselves included. As people ate of different dishes their hair would change to the colour of the last piece of food they ate. It was ingenious magic really, though Lily was loathe to admit the fact. There was a round of applause led by Dumbledore himself as his magnificent beard was turned a bright purple by the beetroot he had eaten. Judging from the wink he sent James and his friends, the choice of food had been very deliberate, and Lily could have sworn she heard him discussing the lovely shade of purple with Professor Slughorn as they exited the Hall.

By the time she got to bed that evening, Lily was confused, exhausted and all together happy. The day had been a perfect follow up to the magical day she'd had previously and these changes in behaviour seemed to have done the whole school some good, even in that short period of time. She just hoped that she wouldn't wake to find thing back to normal.

-James-

Life at Hogwarts was slipping into an easy routine. It had been a month since his conversation with Lily in the Room of Requirement and since that evening, James had made good on everything he had said to her. He paid no attention to what people thought of him anymore, he just did what he enjoyed and let people gawk as much as they wanted to.

What had come as a surprise was that after the first few nights of Aerobatics practise with Sirius, a small group had come to watch every evening. He'd always had groups of girls come to watch his Quidditch training sessions but that was normal, the odd part was that the first of these people were none other than Lily and Monica.

Apparently Lily, along with most of the school, had seen them out of the windows on that first afternoon. Aerobatics was generally considered a feminine sport, like ice-skating and synchronised-swimming in the muggle world. For this reason they had only ever practised at James' house over the summer, but as the week progressed, more and more people had come out to watch, silent for the most part but gasping collectively at some particularly daring manoeuvres and applauding when they were successfully completed.

It had also become the height of fashion to be seen reading classical novels. This irked him slightly as most people would never have bothered picking up a copy of Macbeth or Herodotus if it wasn't popular, but he had to concede that it would likely do most of them some good.

The flip side of this was that he could now read as much as he liked without any fear of what people thought of him. He spent hours reading their course books and other works on related subjects. Soon enough Sirius and Monica were joining him in his nightly readings, one sitting on the couch and the other on the floor in front of them, head resting on their lap. It was great to see Sirius so happy, he had all but lost his haughty disdain for people in general and seemed to be enjoying every second of his relationship. It was a far cry from the boy who had nightmares about his family.

One distinct advantage of Sirius and Monica's relationship was that it inadvertently (or so Sirius claimed) allowed James a lot of time to talk with Lily. It had begun awkwardly as they were both a little unsure of what was expected by the other. After the first couple of weeks they were holding conversation as though they had been friends for as long as they'd known each other. Lily certainly still seemed unsure and a little defensive, and he frequently found himself holding back something that he may have said to Sirius, worried that she may take it the wrong way.

In general, things seemed to be getting better and better. A week previously Lily had sat down next to him on a couch by the fire...

_James looked up at the sound of soft footsteps, he put his hand on the page so he wouldn't lose his place and glanced up. It was Lily, though he'd known that from the sound of her footfall, he didn't know anyone else who walked so lightly._

_He smiled to himself and went back to reading; he already knew what was going to happen. She came down at this time most evenings and sat on the couch next to Sirius or Monica (whoever was on the couch that night), opened her book and read with them until Monica went up to bed. She would leave with her best friend, always bidding them a polite, friendly goodnight. It therefore came as an immense but not unpleasant surprise when he felt a weight sink into the couch beside him. There was no question about who it was, the gentle scent of lavender gave that away instantly. He chanced a glance at her and saw that she was already absorbed in her book so he went back to his own but found that he couldn't seem to make any progress._

_They sat that way for a full fifteen minutes until Lily reached over and turned the page for him saying softly, 'That's how you turn it, you seem to have forgotten,' before returning to her book without another word._

_Normally the idea of someone touching one of his books would have made him upset, but the fact that it was Lily, and that she seemed to be just barely hinting at a flirtatious statement made him forget his phobia._

_He finally pulled his thoughts away from her and continued to read, making a point of turning the pages rather loudly, and was eventually gratified when the hint of a smile played across her lips..._

Every evening since, Lily had sat next to him during their reading time, never saying a word. He was generally able to get a small smile from her with a particularly dramatic flourish when he turn a page but past that, the small statement from her might never have happened.

During classes she had joined Monica in sitting with them and they often did homework as a group. Sometimes he was lucky enough to have half an hour with her alone, and those were the times he treasured the most. Their conversations ranged from things in the muggle or wizarding world that the other didn't know about, to discussions about his Aerobatics practise and how he translated that into Quidditch strategy. Sometimes the six of them found time to have a picnic out by the lake, the weather was still cool but the fresh air was worth it. Other times they were so swamped with homework that they wouldn't see each other aside from in class and at meals.

Things with Lily seemed to be going splendidly but what James hadn't counted on was that the rest of the female population might find his changes to be a good thing as well. Sirius was safe, barely, as he was in a relationship, but James was nearing the point where he had to have constant female company to avoid the hopeful girls who tried to catch his eye. Now most of the time this was merely annoying, but there were two situations, or rather, two people that he could not abide.

One was his ex-girlfriend Melanie, who seemed to be trying to be a better person. That in itself he respected but she seemed to think it meant that they would get back together. He had no delusions about how that would turn out but it did worry him because he could see parallels between her and himself. He was hoping against hope that Lily was not seeing him in the way that he say Melanie. It was good to become the person that you wanted to be but not achieving something that you had hoped to because of it would come as a huge blow.

The other problem was his assignment partner for the term, Lauren Belle. She was a problem for a different reason entirely. James was well aware that she was interested in him, and it seemed to have gone beyond the initial infatuation that he had assumed it to be. This was a problem because he genuinely liked Lauren. She was starting to become a friend to him but that was as far as it went. He was dreading the day that she might work up the courage to ask him out; it was one thing to turn down someone who only wants to be with you for popularity, quite another to turn someone down when you truly respect them and find them interesting and a good friend.

He decided that the best thing for him to do was stop this issue before it became one. So that Friday, he made his way to their weekly assignment meet-up rather more slowly than usual. When he finally walked into the library he saw her face turn toward him expectantly, brown hair shining in the candlelight. It hurt to know what he had to do, but he knew it would save a lot of pain later.

'Hi Lauren,' he said in what he hoped was a casual tone.

'Hi James!' she replied, 'I've had some great ideas for our project.'

'That's brilliant, I'm glad to hear it, I've been reading up on some extra spells we could tie into our Transfiguration piece, but first, I need to talk with you if that's okay.'

'Sure James, what's up?'

'Well, I just felt that I should let you know that there's someone I'm interested in, who I'd like to be in a relationship with,' he realised too late that he should have phrased it differently, the moment her eyes lit up, he felt a huge weight of guilt in his stomach, 'Lauren I'm sorry, it's Lily.'

'Oh,' was all she replied.

'Lauren I'm sorry,' he began before she started to speak again.

'No it's okay James, really, I know you've liked her for a long time and that she is what inspired you to change, to be honest I'm really enjoying just being friends with you, if that's all I can have then I'll take it gladly,' she smiled sadly and he felt his heart break while the guilt got worse. He was surprised when the sad smile was replaced with a grin and a defiant gleam in those stunning blue eyes, 'But don't for a second think that I'll just give up because of what you've said.'

James smiled at this, relieved that she was still talking to him, 'Fair enough. Just please don't keep your hopes up too high.'

He was surprised at how smoothly the rest of the evening passed. They completed the spell work for their charms project and made a solid start on their Muggle Studies report. By the time they said their goodbyes, it was as though nothing had happened.

**LJLJLJLJLJJLJLJLJLJ**

**So there we go, a little bit of info about how things are going after their chat. Hopefully it gives you a little bit of an indication of what's to come. Just bear in mind that the books clearly state that they don't get together til 7th year, so I may have to throw a few hurdles in there along the way.**

**Please do leave me a review, even if it's just to say that you enjoyed it. They make me smile.**

**Til next time,**

**Jousche**


	14. Insecurity

**Hello hello, sorry about how long it's taking me to write at the moment, I have a lot going on in my life right now and it's difficult to avoid having that come through in my writing. Hope that you enjoy it and that it gets everyone ready for the next chapter. Also, please do review.**

* * *

**Insecurity  
**

-Sirius-

Sirius' life was good. There was no other way to put it. Less than two months into his first serious relationship he felt like it was the right place for him to be. He'd spent most of his dating life having deliberately casual flings with girls because he was scared of falling in love. His family had never loved him the way that James' parents did, so why should any girl he dated feel that way about him? This thought had plagued him right up until James had his revelation about Lily. In the end he decided that maybe if he showed the sensitive side of himself more often, the right person might come along.

By this point he'd been infatuated with Monica for a while but in the same way that every other girl had been attractive to him; someone that could hang on his arm and show that Sirius Black got what he wanted. When his usual tactic of 'ask a girl out and watch them fall at his feet' didn't work, he began to wonder why. Eventually he began to see what James had always seen in Lily. A real, interesting, incredible person who wasn't going to enter a relationship just because of physical attraction. In other words, someone who wasn't a 'slore', as James had so aptly put it.

From the point that he had realised this, Sirius had started looking very closely at the way he acted. Every time he caught himself doing anything that he didn't agree with, he stopped and made a mental note of it. With every aborted action, he got closer to being what he thought was his ideal self. It hadn't taken long to cut back some of the nastier habits he'd picked up, such as picking on younger students and hexing anyone who annoyed him. The hard part was working up the courage to do things like aerobatics practice, he hadn't been able to manage that until James had been ready to go through with it as well. After all, who could suggest that two of the most popular people in the school were not cool. In fact, the exact opposite had occurred; things that would normally get people picked on were coming into fashion, and he was loving every second of it.

Sirius looked up from the book he was pretending to read and and smiled. Monica had fallen asleep against his leg, it was her turn to sit on the floor tonight and rest against him, but ever the gentleman, he carefully got up and lifted her easily onto the couch so that she could sleep in peace. He settled himself down where she had been sitting and looked over at James. Once again, his friend was deep in conversation with Lily, he kept catching what must have been muggle words like 'television' and 'electricity'. The pair were always engaged in discussions about the muggle and wizarding worlds, they seemed to have discovered that James really was changing, and apparently Lily approved of that. To an extent at least; she still sat on the opposite side of the couch to him, and looked to be avoiding physical contact.

James seemed to be handling it rather well, he was not attempting to make contact but neither was he making it obvious. He was completely in his element. The guy had always been a natural with women but give him something interesting to talk about and he was a sight to behold, the occasional 'accidental' movements that lifted his shirt and exposed his abs were obviously affecting Lily, and the fact that he held her gaze while talking and listening was something that Sirius knew from experience would make most girls go weak at the knees. But it looked as though James was just genuinely interested in the conversation, perhaps his subtle flirting was actually just real interest.

Regardless of what progress James might be making with Lily, there were more important things happening on this particular evening. The moon was full and it was time for them to head down and meet Moony.

'Oi, loverboy,' Sirius said loudly, causing James to startle and blush for just a moment before regaining his cool. What James couldn't have seen was that Lily had also blushed, that tidbit was worth storing away to be examined later.

'We have a friend to go meet up with,' he continued.

'James! You aren't going to start sneaking out again are you?' Lily asked, shocked.

Oh dear, here we go, wrapped around her finger already is he? Sirius smirked and replied, 'Not at all dear Lily-flower,' he'd begun calling her this a few weeks back as a joke and it had stuck, 'we just need to go upstairs and help Peter plan a prank.'

Judging by the alarmed expression on James' face, that was exactly the wrong thing to say.

Lily turned to face James with an angry look on her face, 'you're going to plan a prank? what happened to changing?'

'I-I- it's going to be harmless, promise, nothing mean or nasty or anything, _right Sirius_?' He finished this remark with a glare that left Sirius feeling as though he was going to wake up with more bruises that usual when Prongs took out his annoyance at him.

'Of course it will be harmless Lily-flower, when have we ever pulled harmful pranks, we'll be making all of the Slytherins sprout flowers from their hair, they'll look like pictures of serenity, and smell a damn lot better than usual,' he batted his eyelashes at her and hoped that she'd accept his obvious lie as a close to the discussion.

Unfortunately, Monica chose that moment to awaken, and while he loved looking at her when she was just waking (she looked very cute when she was sleepy), it just gave Lily another option to rant.

'Mon, tell your boyfirend that he's not allowed make James go pull pranks, he's a bad influence!'

Monica, obviously too sleepy to realise that it was not the right moment to joke, replied, 'Why don't you tell your own boyfriend not to pull pranks.'

At this point both Lily and James turn bright red. Monica seemed to have realised her mistake because she looked at Sirius and gave him an expression that cleary said 'Oops'.

'Well James,' said Lily in an attempt at a cool and aloof voice but that came out rather flustered, 'if you'd rather pull pranks than continue our discussion I shan't stop you.'

James looked rather dejected by this point but they both knew that there was no alternative. A rather large shock came when it was discovered that Lily wasn't finished.

'But if you must prank the Slytherins and it will be harmless, then make sure the flowers are pretty, it will be an excellent juxtaposition!' With that she turned and walked upstairs to the girls dormitory, leaving a very shocked group of friends behind her.

After a good ten seconds Monica found her voice, 'I think that means you're friends now James, real friends I mean,' Monica too chose that point to leave the room. She gave Sirius a soft, chaste kiss and then followed Lily up the stairs, obviously intent on interrogating her.

He gave his friend a thumbs up and smirked, 'you're in,' James scowled at him, causing his smirk to turn into laughter, 'come on lover boy, we need to go or we'll be late, you know how Moony gets when he's lonely.'

James nodded to him and they went upstairs to fetch the cloak.

'About time you two showed up!' Peter exclaimed as they walked in, 'I was beginning to think you were ditching The Marauders for your stupid girls again.'

Sirius didn't even have time to react, one second there was relative calm, the next, a crack resounded through the room as James' open palm hit Peter's cheek, leaving a bright red mark and driving him to the ground. he knew exactly what his best friend was feeling, hearing his girlfriend described as a 'stupid girl' was more than just insulting, especially coming from one of his best friends.

'Don't ever speak about Lily like that,' James growled menacingly.

'Whoa James, calm down,' Peter whimpered from the floor, 'you know I didn't mean it like that, you just spend so much more time with them than with me and Moony. We were your friends first, just because we don't have breasts doesn't make us any less important.'

Sirius was surprised by this revelation, he'd noticed that Peter had been absent more often than not lately, but hadn't realised he'd felt so left out.

'Sorry Wormtail, I didn't know you felt so left out,' James seemed just as stunned, from the look on his face, the thought hadn't even occurred to him.

'Well it's hard not to when you're both seeing girls all the time and me and Moony are left to hang by ourselves.'

'So, wait, are you upset about not seeing us or not having a girl as well?' Sirius half teased.

'Well, both I guess. I just want to feel included.' There seemed to be an ominous note to the statement, as though Peter was insinuating that he wanted to be included by anyone, even if it wasn't them.

In a bid to raise the poor boy's spirits, Sirius exclaimed, 'Quickly now, Moony is waiting for us, if we don't hurry his furry little problem will become a furry _big_ problem!'_  
_

They shrouded themselves in the cloak, Peter having to transform first so that it fully concealed them, then walked carefully back downstairs and out of the portrait hole. He saw Monica, who must have forgotten something in the common room, look up with a slightly suspicious frown on her face as the doorway closed behind them.

A few secret passageways and a hidden slide later, they were out on the Hogwarts grounds and he was able to forget about his human worries as the beast within him came to the fore.

What followed was one of the most fun nights the Marauders had experienced since their first animagus transformations the previous year. The world was theirs to explore, and explore it they did. The forest was filled with the sounds of howling and the lake caused bark-like laughter to echo through the night.

**00000**

By the time that he stumbled up to his dormitory the next morning, Sirius was more than ready to pass out, classes be damned.

This plan was quickly aborted when he discovered that someone was sleeping in his bed.

It wouldn't be the first time that one of his many fans had tried to seduce him, but none of them had so far had the audacity to enter his dormitory without permission, and now there would be hell to pay.

He quietly walked over to the bed, James and Peter stumbling into the room behind him. He turned and placed his finger over his lips, signalling for silence.

They looked at his bed and saw what he had seen.

He continued to the bed and gently pulled back the covers to reveal the head of Monica. At first he was relieved that he was not going to be molested, but then the implications came to him, if Monica was here, she knew that they had snuck out, and there was no way for him to explain it without at least revealing the secret of James' invisibility cloak.

He looked at the others in despair and whispered, 'What should I say?'

Neither got the chance to respond for at the sound of his voice, Monica sat bolt upright and, turning to face him, gave him one of the most withering glares he had ever received.

'Monica, I-' he began but was quickly cut off.

'You two, out,' she said in a voice that brooked no argument.

'But it's our-' Peter tried.

'OUT!'

They finally got their wits about them and exited the room in a hurry, leaving Sirius alone with an obviously upset Monica.

'Where have you been?' she asked him.

He knew it was a loaded question and tried to think of a response that wouldn't result in him being single.

'Monica, do you believe that I trust you?' he asked tentatively.

'I don't know what to believe right now Sirius.'

'Well, I hope you believe that if I could tell you all of the truth, I would, but it's not my secret to share. Suffice to say that we were out on the grounds.' He knew that the explanation was woefully inadequate but hoped that maybe she would accept that he really couldn't say anything.

'Oh? And how did that happen Sirius, we saw you go up to your room and I didn't see you come back down, I went straight back down because I forgot my book. I couldn't sleep so I came to find you and you were gone. What am I supposed to think about that?'

'Um...' he began lamely, but thankfully, or perhaps not, the answer was provided.

'I thought you'd snuck out to meet up with some bimbo in a broom closet or something. Now are you you going to prove me wrong, or am I right?'

He had originally thought that he was in trouble for pulling pranks after hours, not so bad in itself but very bad when it was chosen over spending time with his girlfriend. This was a lot, lot worse. He decided that he would need to call in the cavalry.

'Monica, there is part of this that is a huge secret that I cannot share, and there is part of this that is a huge secret that I may be able to share just a little, but I need James' permission. It will hopefully help explain what's going on without giving away the other secret. Will you let me check with him?'

'Oh, so you want to get your story straight with him and make sure it's foolproof before you lie to me?' Things were getting out of hand very quickly, Monica was becoming increasingly paranoid and displaying an insecure side that he hadn't known was so prevalent.

'No, it's okay, I'll talk to him in here, you can hear everything we'll say.'

Monica merely huffed in response so he flicked his wand and opened the door, unsurprisingly causing James and Peter to fall through it.

'We weren't listening!' They said in unison, a little too quickly, immediately disproving their statement.

'It doesn't mater,' Sirius said quickly, 'James, as you probably heard, Monica thinks I've been out cheating on her, you guys were with me so you know that's not true but she doesn't see how we could all have snuck out with nobody noticing. I need her to know that it's not true but to prove that I need to tell her about the Christmas present your dad gave you in first year.'

At this, James' face went ashen, and Sirius knew that he was very close to stretching their friendship a little too far, James had not told anyone but the Marauders about his invisibility cloak and had never planned to. He could only hope that his friend would understand just how important this relationship was to him.

It took nearly a minute, the wheels were turning, as always, in James' head. Finally, he nodded once.

Sirius let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding and reached out his hand to James, who placed the cloak in it.

'Monica, this is how we have been able to get away with all of our pranks and other misadventures, it is also how we snuck out tonight, we were all four of us together the whole night.'

With no further explanation he pulled the cloak around himself and allowed himself a grin at the expression on Monica's face.

'The rest of the story has to remain a mystery, because as I said, it's not my secret to tell. But we were-'

'Visiting Remus,' Monica supplied.

He felt his heart drop, there should've been no way that she could know about Remus' secret, but somehow she did.

'How did you-' he began.

'Well I noticed he looked pretty sick the last couple of days, and he's not here now, so he must be in the hospital wing right?'

Sirius nodded glumly in response, wondering just how much trouble he was in, he really didn't want to have to reveal the secret of their animagus transformations as well but there would be no other way to explain it.

'That's really sweet of you all, sneaking out to visit him while he's sick, I didn't realise you were all so... nice.'

Wait what? Somehow she seemed to be under the impression that they had just snuck to see Moony while he was sick in bed. This was both a very good and a very bad thing. It meant that Remus' secret was safe, but also meant that he had to lie to Monica, or at least not correct her, which was just as bad in his opinion.

Thankfully he was saved the necessity of replying as Monica moved over and embraced him, softly kissing his cheek as she did so.

'I'm proud of you,' she whispered in his ear.

He felt himself blush slightly at the comment. By this point James and Peter seemed to have gotten uncomfortable, which led top the next logical step; a mock reenactment of the scene they'd just witnessed.

'Oh Sirius, you're so great,' Peter warbled in his best 'Monica voice'.

'No Mon-Mon, you're the greatest,' James replied in a deep, masculine voice.

'Nuhuh,'

'Yuhuh,'

'Nuhuh,'

'Yuhuh infinity,'

Sirius rolled his eyes and Monica laughed.

'Well now that I know you're here, I guess I should go back to bed,' Monica said with, was that a hint of reluctance in her voice?

'Seeing as you were in my bed, back to bed would imply-'

Monica laughed, 'Nice try Sirius, maybe some other time.'

The way that she said it gave him the impression that she did want there to be 'another time' at some point, but he knew that neither of them were ready to openly show that level of commitment.

He gave her one last kiss goodnight, to a chorus of mushy kissing noises from James and Peter before she left.

'Well that was lucky,' he said quietly.

'Very,' said Peter, 'I thought we were about to lose another huge secret, as though the cloak wasn't bad enough.'

'Two,' Sirius replied.

'Two?' Peter queried.

'If she had found out about Moony then how could we explain seeing him without exposing the other three Marauders?'

The implications of this sank in and the three of them went to bed in the hope of waking up early enough for class the next morning, well, maybe hope is the wrong word...

-Lily-

'You have to Lily, you promised to give him a chance and he hasn't done anything to lose it,' Monica told her firmly.

'I can't Mon,' she replied softly, 'I'm so scared.'

'What do you have to be scared about?'

'I'm starting to trust him, I consider him a friend, I'm looking forward to the evenings because he talks to me about anything and everything and makes me feel good.'

'How is that a bad thing Lily? To me it sounds as though you like him.'

'I can't. I can't like him. What if I get hurt, what if things don't work out, what if-'

'Lily stop,' Monica said in a forceful tone, 'you can't let fear govern your life, James is trying to be a good person, look at the changes he's made. The whole damn school is a nicer place because everyone looks up to him and Sirius and they are both acting better. You said it yourself last year, they are so similar that if you hit one the other would feel it. Look at Sirius and I, it's working out Lily.'

She could only shake her head in response, Monica may not understand it but there was a deep rooted fear in Lily's heart and she didn't want anything to do with it. That was why she never sat close enough to have any physical contact with James, she knew that with that level of intimacy, tiny as it was, her task would be nearly impossible to complete.

'I have to Mon, I can't be with him and I can't keep leading him on.'

'Fine,' Monica replied abruptly, causing Lily to look up, 'but if you stop talking to him then you're going to lose me too, because I'm not giving up Sirius for your stupidity.'

The words stung, but she couldn't muster a reply as Monica got up and walked out of the room.

It had started that morning when Monica had explained that the night before, the boys had snuck out to go visit Remus. What she couldn't know was that it was impossible. Lily had discovered the year before that Remus was a werewolf, there was no other explanation for his monthly absences and pale, sickly appearance around the full moon. For some reason, Monica was convinced that Sirius had not been lying to her, so if that were the case, how could they possibly have been visiting Remus while he was transformed?

She didn't believe that they had found a way to visit him but there was no denying that they had snuck out, and to do so while a werewolf on the grounds was stupid and dangerous. It was at the point that Lily had discovered that she was scared of the thought of James coming back injured, or worse, bitten. As soon as she realised this, all of her insecurities came rushing back, the thought of losing someone she loved was so scary that she wanted to hide from it, and in this case, that meant hiding from James.

Lily sighed, she knew that she wasn't strong enough to get through it without Monica which meant that she would have to keep seeing James. She would just have to try and make it obvious that she was not interested in him. It wouldn't be easy, but it was better than being hurt by him.

So that evening, she pulled her book out of her bag like normal and sat down on the same couch as James as far away as she could manage. She noticed the furtive glances that James kept sending toward her but ignored them. He tried to initiate conversation a few times and she remained polite, but said nothing that might be perceived as flirtatious or caring. He turned the pages of his book loudly and it was all she could do to keep a straight face. By the end of the evening James looked upset and she didn't blame him, but there was nothing to be done for it. The only way that she could keep herself safe was to stay away from the things that could hurt her.

Sleep was evasive that night. She tossed and turned to no avail, remembering the hauntingly sad expression on James' face as she'd left and the look Monica had given her before she closed the curtains around her bed. When she finally succumbed to exhaustion, she slept fitfully. None of these were enough to deter her though, and she was determined to maintain her chosen path now that she had started along it.

-James-

_Five reasons why life is out to get me._

_By James Potter_

_1. Lily thought I was an arrogant toerag and wouldn't get to know me._

_2. Other girls, attractive girls wanted me but the one girl I wanted didn't._

_3. I'm changing myself to be the person that I want to be but apparently it's still not good enough._

_4. Monica told Sirius that the reason Lily is avoiding me now is because she's starting to like me. How does that make any sense?_

_5. Monica said that the only chance I have at getting Lily to change her mind is by continuing to do exactly what I'm doing and not losing my cool, even though every moment I spend with Lily ignoring me makes me feel like a failure._

'See Sirius,' said James, pacing in their dormitory and waving the parchment at his friend, 'Life has it in for me, it doesn't matter what I do, nothing works out.'

Sirius sighed, 'Think about it James, the changes you've made have worked on multiple levels, first and most importantly, you're becoming the person you want to be. Second, Lily _likes_ you, maybe as more than a friend too. Everything that you wanted is happening, you just need to be patient and keep doing what you're doing.'

'But the holidays start soon,' he said persistently, 'if she's trying to avoid me now then what will happen when she gets two months away from me to reinforce her fears?'

He could see that Sirius was thinking along the same lines. Mercifully a plan began to form in his head.

'What if we-' he began.

'I think I know exactly what you mean James,' Sirius smiled at him and they got up and walked downstairs to find the other Marauders; it was high time for another prank.'

**Hmmm, what on earth are they going to do now? I already have a fairly solid idea but if anyone has their own idea please send them to me, if I end up incorporating them I'll send out a preview of the chapter to you ;)**


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